The Big Four on Qi
by Vsyo vo mrake nochi
Summary: Jack Frost, Merida Dunbroch, Hiccup Haddock and Rapunzel Fitzherbert feature in this episode of Qi. I am presenting.
1. Chapter 1: Death

**_Qi: DEATH Halloween Special_**

**_I, Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi, shall be the presenter._**

**_The Big Four will be the contestants._**

**_Direct Transcript_**

* * *

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**

[_eerily_] Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to _QI_. Coming to you tonight from . . . the other side. The hilly bourne from whence no traveller returns. The darkling plain, the place we go . . . when we are-[_dramatic sound effects and close-up_] . . . Dead!

[_suddenly cheerful_] But, before we descend into darkness, it's time to meet the panel: the bucket-kicking Rapunzel Fitzherbert . . . the clog-popping Merida Dundroch . . . the mortal-coil off-shuffling Jack Frost . . . and our very own Hiccup pushing-up-the-dasies Haddock.

And tonight the buzzers are suitably dolorous. Rapunzel goes:

**Rapunzel**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the "Twilight Zone" theme_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Merida goes:

**Merida**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a door creaking open, a man laughing evilly, and the door slamming_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Jack goes:

**Jack**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the repeated sound of the shower-stabbing scene from "Psycho"_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
And Hiccup goes:

**Hiccup**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays a cheery "Always look on the bright side of life!" from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
So, let's start with something terrifying. This is a marmot, a pot-bellied member of the squirrel family.

Viewscreens

: Picture of four marmots, on their hind legs and eating what appears to be large crackers.

**Hiccup**  
[_makes an exaggerated noise of terror_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It's about the size of a cat and squeaks loudly when anxious or alarmed.

**Hiccup**  
Ritz! They're eating Ritz biscuits.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, they seem to be, don't they.

**Hiccup**  
Or they're Mini Cheddars.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Given the right conditions, it's a dangerous, a deadly merciless killer of humans. How?

**Rapunzel**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the "Twilight Zone" theme_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Rapunzel.

**Rapunzel**  
Er, lead piping in the billiard room.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Colonel Marmot!

**Rapunzel**  
Are these the ones that live in the Gobi Desert?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The Mongolian and Russian Steppes.

**Rapunzel**  
Yes. I've seen loads of these then, and I did a . . . a railway journey for the BBC, oddly enough. And they scurry around. None of them killed any humans in front of me while they were doing that, but . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No, and yet they're more responsible for death than any other animal except the-

**Hiccup**  
Do they get caught up in machinery somehow?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No. The maxim or the marmot.

**Jack**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the "Psycho" stabbing sound_]

**Jack**  
Is it to do with the Ritz crackers? They sort of spit on the Ritz crackers, put them all back into the packet . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Do you know, oddly, Jack, the spitting part is good. When they spit and cough, billions die. Well, millions.

**Rapunzel**  
Are they carriers of TB, like badgers are allegedly . . . ?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Worse.

**Hiccup**  
The plague.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
"Plague" is the right answer.

**Hiccup**  
They've got the plague!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They are the actual original animal source of-

**Rapunzel**  
Not the rats?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No, they cough and spit onto the fleas, which catch the disease, which then goes to the rats, which then came to Europe and wiped out half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century.

**Jack**  
The problem with them coughing is obviously the fact that they've got those dry crackers. Just give them a drink of water next to it. Have the biscuit, a little water, no coughing.

**Hiccup**  
No coughing.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, you're right. Do you know why it's called "bubonic"? Do you know what that-

Viewscreens

: Two pictures of a wooden door onto which a red cross has been painted.

**Rapunzel**  
Those big round things come up under your-[_gestures to her underarms_]-buboes are-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The buboes, but the bubo itself actually comes from the Greek "boubon", which is "groin".

**Rapunzel**  
Groin.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
One of the areas where you get a big swelling when you get the bubonic plague.

**Rapunzel**  
How often . . . ?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
. . . do I get a swelling?

**Rapunzel**  
Yes, sorry. No.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No. [_muttering_] Not as often as I used to, I'm sorry to say.

**Jack**

[_at viewscreens_] Given that's all they've got to do is just paint that red cross on, they've not done a great job, have they?

**Rapunzel**  
What's wrong with that?

**Jack**  
Well it's well to the left, isn't it there? They're . . . You know, you'd have thought if all you've got to do all day is go 'round doing a red cross, you'd have more pride in your work than that.

**Rapunzel**  
You're not . . . You're not hanging around doing it though, are you? "There's plague in here. Let's . . . Oh I'll just do a . . . " [_mimes delicately painting a cross on the door_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, right!

**Hiccup**  
A really long stick they do it with. [_closes one eye for precision and mimes painting a cross with a long pole_]

**Rapunzel**  
You're just waiting for a marmot to come flying out and bite you or spit at you.

**Jack**  
Knock on the door and say-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Anyway. Yes, almost a million Britons fell victim to the Black Death. But, what illness do British doctors now treat more than any other?

**Rapunzel**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the "Twilight Zone" theme_]

**Rapunzel**  
The widest disease in these sort of quizzes is normally dental caries, but I suppose dentists treat that rather than doctors.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Rather than doctors, yes.

**Rapunzel**  
Yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
This is doctors, specifically.

**Merida**  
Is it cancer?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, dear, no, it's not cancer.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "CANCER".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No-nee-no-nee-no.

**Hiccup**  
Flu.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Nor is it flu.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "FLU".

**Jack**  
Is it a little niggle that you're not quite sure what it is . . . but you think it'll be enough to keep you off work for the rest of the week?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Three million, one hundred thousand people in Britain every _year_.

**Hiccup**  
Pregnancy?

**Rapunzel**  
Pregnancy isn't a disease, Hiccup, surely.

**Jack**  
It would be if Hiccup got it.

**Rapunzel**  
No, it would be a _surprise_; it wouldn't be . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I'll give you a clue, then: It begins with "D".

**Hiccup**  
Death.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No. Doctors don't treat death, unfortunately. No.

**Rapunzel**  
Deafness.

**Merida**  
Dermatitis.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Not deafness, not dermatitis.

**Merida**  
Give us a second letter.

**Rapunzel**  
It's got to be a vowel, isn't it?

**Hiccup**  
Do a "sounds like".

**Rapunzel**  
Yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It sounds like-[_clasps palms together_]-"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . . . "

**Hiccup**  
Dinned!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No, no, no. When do-

**Hiccup**  
Confession.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Confession. It sounds like confession, begins with a "D" . . . .

**Hiccup**  
Dession.

**Merida**  
Depression!

**Hiccup**  
[_quickly_] Depression!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Thank you very much indeed! Well done. Between seven and ten percent of women suffer from depression and about three to five percent of men. And this is what they call unipolar depression, i.e., not manic depression.

If you're gonna to be depressed, you're luckier if you get manic depression than if you just get plain depression, 'cause you get the upside of mania.

**Hiccup**  
"I can conquer the world!"

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That kind of feeling, exactly.

**Jack**  
But now you can't say manic depression, can you? You've got to say bipolar disorder now, haven't you? Isn't that right?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Actually, the best people on the subject, Kay Redfield Jamison, in America, for example, has written-

**Hiccup**  
That's a brilliant book. _An Unquiet Mind_.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, _Unquiet Mind_ is a fantastic . . . She calls it "manic depression", or "madness"! She's _seriously_ manic depressive and takes a lot of Lithium. She's also a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

**Merida**  
Do depressed people mind what you call them?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Erm, generally speaking not, to be honest. I mean one of the great advantages of, certainly, manic depression is a sense of humour. Kind of keeps you going, because of the loony things you do when you're manic.

There was one person who took apart a car, bit by bit, on a huge area. He laid out a sheet, took apart the engine, sort of did outlines around each part and numbered them, named them . . . everything was fantastic. Then, of course, he got the mood swing and was depressed and he kicked it all over. "Fuck it!" The whole thing to pieces, he was-[_makes sound of angry indifference_]. And so no car, basically. Bits everywhere.

**Rapunzel**  
But that's bipolar depression. What about just generally feeling a bit miserable and sad about life, does that count as depression?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It's arguably . . . Of course, a very, very difficult condition to diagnose, and people who are cynical about it and think, "Oh, just walk it off," you know, there is, of course, some truth in that, inasmuch as exercise is shown to be incredibly helpful for depression.

**Jack**  
Is that the theory with the . . . You know, you go into a chemist, and you can only buy a certain amount of Paracetamol, 'cause they're worried that you're going to take too much of it. You could always walk down the street, obviously and then go to the next chemist and buy another lot, couldn't you? But are they hoping that that little walk will make you think, "Oh, actually, life's not that bad"?

**Merida**  
You pass an off licence and a strip club . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Something to cheer you up, you see.

**Merida**  
You see someone fall in the canal . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Swimming with dolphins. That's apparently a very good treatment for depression.

**Merida**  
Not if they reject you. Not if they go-[_makes disparaging dolphin noises_]-and off they go. That takes you to another level.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The problem is often the other way round; is severe bruising because the dolphins get too interested in you and because their penises are a foot long and S-shaped, you can be in serious trouble.

**Merida**  
And that's just the ladies!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah. But, while on the subject of depression, what is the saddest song you know?

**Hiccup**  
Otis Redding. "Sad Song."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That's . . . that's gotta be sad.

**Merida**  
I saw something . . . That song, Labour used it, with D-Ream: "Things Can Only Get Better"? Because if you're in a situation where things can only get better, you are seriously screwed up, aren't you?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well, there is a song which has caused suicide.

**Rapunzel**  
Oh, I know this. Billie Holiday, isn't it? Erm . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Say it! You know it.

**Rapunzel**  
I know, but I-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
She sang it.

**Rapunzel**  
I know, but it's-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
She didn't write it, but . . . It sounds like a New Order.

**Rapunzel**  
Say that again?

**Man in Audience**  
"Strange Fruit".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Not "Strange Fruit", but that is a great song, "Strange Fruit".

**Woman in Audience**  
"Gloomy Sunday."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
She said it: "Gloomy Sunday."

**Rapunzel**  
"Gloomy Sunday."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well done. Award yourself two points. Yeah.

**Hiccup **[_Raises hand]_  
Erm, "Gloomy Sunday".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
If you promise not to hurl yourself off the edge of the set, then I will allow you to hear a little of "Gloomy Sunday" sung by Miss Billie Holiday.

[_Billi Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" starts playing, with the opening lyrics,  
"Sunday is gloomy . . . "_]

**Hiccup**  
Oh, Jesus!

[_The song continues, "My hours are slumberless . . . "_]

**Hiccup**  
[_presses buzzer, which whistles from "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
You've always got the antedote!

**Hiccup**  
[_pointing at his buzzer_] Now you know what to do if you're feeling down.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I have to say, I've just been looking at the scoreboard, and at the moment the audience is winning.

**Rapunzel**  
Yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well done.

**Jack**  
Monday's supposed to be the most depressing day of the week. Imagine you'd had a Sunday like that and you had Monday to look forward to.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No, well, this is a song written by one Rezső Seress in 1933, a Hungarian, inspired by the end of a relationship. It became an instant hit, and so flushed with success he went to his girlfriend and suggested they get back together. A day later she poisoned herself-

**Hiccup**  
[_laughs openly_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
-leaving a two word suicide note: "Gloomy Sunday".

**Merida**  
Oh, really?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah. A hundred suicides, apparently, have been linked to the song. The _New York Times_ had this great big headline: "Hundreds of Hungarians kill themselves under the influence of a song." Soon Americans were joining them and the ghoulish reputation of the "Hungarian suicide song" touched almost every country where it was played.

Victims included teenagers and octogenarians. One man heard a beggar humming the song, immediately gave him all his possessions, jumped to his death off a bridge. Erm . . .

**Rapunzel**  
That's great busking, isn't it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes. The composer himself ended it all by throwing himself from his apartment window in 1968 at the age of seventy.

**Merida**  
Well, that was a horrible mess, wasn't it, that. A seventy year-old hitting the pavement. Ohh.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
[_laughingly incredulous_] Why is that worse than anyone else hitting the pavement?

**Merida**  
Well, you know, a young person has got a bit of fat in . . . on them, something to cushion the splat. But this would just be, just be . . . be bones and skin; just-"crunch"-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
[_laughs with his face buried in his hands_]

**Merida**  
-like a bag of crisps hitting the pavement. "Crunch!" You don't do that at seventy; that's not right.

**Jack**  
There was one bloke, wasn't there . . . He was on the first floor, split up with his missus; She left him, went downstairs, walked out. He jumped out of the window to commit suicide, he lands on her, she dies, he lives, but he thinks, "great", and he went on, didn't he. That was, there was a famous case that I . . . I know all . . . [_nods_].

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I think the word is "Result!"

**Rapunzel**  
A lot of people kill themselves by throwing themselves off Beachy Head.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That is very popular indeed.

**Rapunzel**  
And there are dozens of other cliffs, but people, they're like lemmings, almost literally like lemmings. They want to just go somewhere famous to do it, so they . . . so it's either the Northern Line or Beachy Head.

**Merida**  
I went to Beachy Head very early in the morning, right? Not . . .

**Rapunzel**  
Just as the sun was rising?

**Merida**  
Not to commit suicide, no, but I'd gone to a fishmongers which wasn't open in Eastbourne. [_to audience_] Funnily enough, you'd think the fishmonger would open early, doesn't open until ten! What's going on? Anyway-[_gesturing with wide arms_]-listen round! And, er . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes, thank you!

**Merida**  
All right, Alfred? Nice to see you're in.

And so I thought I'd go up to Beachy Head, just to see what it's like.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes.

**Merida**  
And there was these two guys, sort of sentinels. One of them had a guitar and the other one had a flute, and I was . . . I was wandering along, and they sort of went, [_waves_] "Hi, hi!" like this, and I went, [_waves briefly_] "All right?" like that. Because I . . . I'm not cheerful.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Grumpy sod, yeah.

**Merida**  
And eventually they sort of go . . . They were going, "Hi," and they sort of beckoned me over, and they said, "Everything all right?" I said, "Yeah, fine." And they . . . they said, er, "You're not thinking of, er . . . ?" [_gestures over his shoulder and whistles ominously_] Not . . . not exactly that, but they were there to . . . to prevent people . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh! Bless them.

**Jack**  
They didn't stop-

**Merida**  
Yeah, but get this. Listen to this. I said, "Well, how . . . how often are you here?" They said, "A week . . . Once a week." I said, "Oh, right."

Even better . . . Even better, I said, "How long are you here for?" He said-[_shrugs_]-"About an hour."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
This man Seress, anyway. The BBC banned the song until the year 2002. It's only just been allowed to be played. That is how seriously people take this suicide song.

Anyway, that's probably enough gloom. Let's play a game. Time for Killer Mushroom Roulette!

If you wondered what the, er, skull and crossbones cards on your table were for, I'm going to show you on screen four types of mushroom, numbered one to four. All you've got to do is write down the number of the one you may safely eat.

Is it one, Death Cap? Two, Peppery Milk Cap? Three, Destroying Angel? Or four, _Trumpet of Death_?

One of them is safe to eat, highly nutritious, and very pleasant. The others-_will kill you_!

**Merida**  
Can we try them all first?

**Hiccup**  
You get one each.

**Merida**  
Yeah.

**Rapunzel**  
Somebody told me there are very, very few killer mushrooms-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
There are very few.

**Rapunzel**  
-and we're so ludicrously scared of these.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
We are. There are three thousand, five hundred species of mushrooms in the UK; about a hundred are poisonous and only fifteen of those are lethal.

**Hiccup**  
One of them I'm sure I've seen in Carluccio's.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That's very possible.

**Hiccup**  
So I've gone for that one.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
All right, so what have you written there?

**Jack**  
I've written number one.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
So you think Death Cap, number one, you can eat?

**Jack**  
The reason being-am I allowed to give a reason?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes, please do.

**Jack**  
Is it . . . It looks a bit, I think, like a _penis_.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
And you can safely eat a penis, can't you? You can.

**Jack**  
Well, that wasn't going to be my logic, but yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Rapunzel, you've gone for?

**Rapunzel**  
Well, I'm afraid . . . I've gone for the same answer I'm afraid-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Number one.

**Rapunzel**  
-but I thought that Trumpet of Death looked like a penis, but, er, there it is.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That's a worry, Rapunzel.

**Rapunzel**  
Well, what can I say?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
What have you got there, Merida?

**Merida**  
Number one.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Number one as well.

**Hiccup**  
I've gone for number four.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well, the ten points go to Hiccup Haddock!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Very good. You all used the same kind of logic, knowing that the one that would sound deadly is probably good, but unfortunately, you all went for the Death Cap and in fact it's the Trumpet of Death that is the one. It's also called a Black Morae or a Horn of Plenty and is delicious and nutty.

**Merida**  
But that wouldn't be on a menu. Trumpet of Death omelette.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
You're quite right, though; it's very, very rare. The last recorded death by mushroom in Britain is too long ago for anyone, basically, to be confident about.

They are pretty nasty: they'll destroy your liver and kidney, particularly the Death Cap and the Destroying Angel.

**Hiccup**  
Do you have to eat a lot of them?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Quite a few actually, yeah. But the thing is, there's no known antidote. The Peppery Milk Cap is more likely to be gastric. You'll have a really bad time, but it can kill you if you have a lot of those. Despite its black colour, the Trumpet of Death is very tasty and goes particularly well with fish. Italians call it the poor man's truffle.

Er, what did the Nazis use Trumpets of Jericho for?

**Merida**  
Was it lift music?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No, it wasn't.

**Rapunzel**  
Did they come up with some foul weapon that was to bring down the walls of, er, cities and towns and things?

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "DESTROYING CITY WALLS".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, dear. I'm afraid-

**Rapunzel**  
Yes, I . . . I kind of thought that was going to happen, but, er . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Joshua in the Bible, of course, brought down, supposedly, the walls of the city of Jericho using Trumpet, though, apparently, archeologists say Jericho had no walls, but never mind. . . . Erm, so it was a pretty easy . . . easy job.

**Rapunzel**  
Not after him anyway.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Erm. Who knows? No, er, this is the Ju87. Does that help?

**Hiccup**  
Junkers.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Junkers, absolutely, known as a particular kind.

**Hiccup**  
Aircraft. 88.

**Merida**  
Stukas.

**Hiccup**  
Stuka, ah, yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The Stuka, ja.

**Rapunzel**  
That's a bird!

**Hiccup**  
It's the siren, the whistling siren when they dive in.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The whistling sound.

**Merida**  
[_raises her hands to an imaginary gun and makes shooting noises_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That's right, they had a . . .

**Merida**  
Just took me all back, I was a kid doing war . . . [_makes shooting noises again_]. No, but then the Stukas start coming . . . [_makes sound of Stuka siren_]

**Hiccup**  
[_chimes in with his own siren_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, do you want to hear them?

**Merida**  
[_starts making shooting noises again_]

[**_SFX_**_: Sound of an actual Stuka aircraft siren._]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It's that noise. That noise was a propeller driving a . . . a siren, just deliberately put on to scare the bejesus . . .

**Hiccup**  
Screaming, screaming siren.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That's right. They called it the Trumpet of Jericho, yeah. And it destroyed more shipping and tanks than any other aircraft in the whole of World War II, including Kamikaze pilots. It was extremely successful, except when it was up against fighters and it sent them over in the Battle of Britain to try and bomb air strips, but the old Hurricanes and Spits were far too nimble and they got thirty down in one day, I believe. Well, the Americans did the same by using Wagner in their helicopters.

**Hiccup**  
They still do.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Do they still?

**Hiccup**  
They still play loud, extremely loud rock music to terrify the opposition.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I've noticed that, in their bedrooms!

**Hiccup**  
They played it to themselves in the tanks, during the Iraq War.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I mean you just want to go and say, "I tell you what, lovely army, very nice vehicles and things . . . Do you have any grown-ups anywhere?"

**Hiccup**  
[_as though to a child_] "Who's in charge of you?"

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
"Don't shout, and don't think it's clever to wear sunglasses if you're a General. Eurgh." [_shakes head annoyedly_] Pathetic!

**Rapunzel**  
Of all the objections to warfare, it's the use of sunglasses!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They're trying to be like at Patton. They think it's sexy and cool.

**Merida**  
Well, it's from films, isn't it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
If you think you're sexy and cool, you're . . . you're just going to be a ghastly tactician.

**Hiccup**  
What about that General who said to the troops, "You've got it all wrong . . . " It's like he was trying to get in with the kids and he said, "When the order is given to attack, it's hammer time."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
And they all looked at him. So he said it again, more serious. "It's hammer time!"

**Merida**  
What, he thought they'd put on, like, big balloony trousers and go-[_starts dancing like MC Hammer_].

**Hiccup**  
[_joins in and starts humming "U Can't Touch This"_]

**Merida**  
[_still dancing in sync with Hiccup_] "Can't touch this!"

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Right next to the ruins of Jericho, as it happens, there is more death and diving. What lives in the Dead Sea?

**Hiccup**  
Not much.

**Merida**  
Isn't there a fish that lives in it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
No fish, no.

**Hiccup**  
It's really stingy. If you get it in your eyes, it really stings.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, it _would_ sting.

**Rapunzel**  
There must be a nematode worm, because nematode worms live everywhere.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They seem to, don't they? No, it's not actually. You've avoided saying "nothing", which would have got a big raspberry.

**Merida**  
Is it a rabbit? It's rabbits always going like that. [_rubbing her eyes_] "Ahh. Ahh."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
"Ahh." It just escaped.

Er, no, in fact, there are small little things called "extremophiles", which are almost like bacteria, but a much much older life form than bacteria.

Viewscreens

: Close-up picture of the microscopic extremophile, which is puffy and has been tinted pink.

**Merida**  
They look quite tasty.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They look like piles. So, erm . . .

**Merida**  
They do.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
So what else do we know about the Dead Sea?

**Hiccup**  
It's below sea level.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The lowest place on Earth.

Viewscreens

: Picture of a man swimming on his back in the Dead Sea.

**Hiccup**  
The lowest place in England is in Norfolk.

**Rapunzel**  
But that's not the Dead Sea, it's just dead boring.

_[Personally, I think she's right]_

**Hiccup**  
The Fens.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The Fens aren't _really_ in Norfolk.

**Hiccup**  
Cambridgeshire.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Cambridgeshire more.

**Jack**  
Talking about lowest exposed areas, I've just had a look at that picture.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah.

**Jack**  
What's he doing with his hands there?

**Merida**  
He's strangling a rabbit.

**Rapunzel**  
That's an old . . . That's an old euphemism.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
More rabbits.

**Rapunzel**  
I'm just going over there to strangle a rabbit.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Strangle a rabbit. Ahh.

**Rapunzel**  
So can you actually do that in the Dead Sea, you can lie around without having to-

**Merida**  
Toss yourself off, yeah, it's fine, yeah. They've got so many problems with the Palestinians. They go, "Ah, have a wank. We don't mind."

**Rapunzel**  
The sea is supposed to be salty, not the jokes!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, very good.

**Hiccup**  
They send people there on the National Health, if they've got psoriasis.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They do, they do. Quite a lot of conditions it's supposed to help. The other thing is . . . it's . . . Despite the myth, people do drown in the Dead Sea. If you face the wrong way, people can't turn themselves 'round. There's too much resistance from the water, apparently.

**Merida**  
It's called natural selection, isn't it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, I think you may be right.

Do you know that there are about two hundred and fifty drownings of people in Britain each year, of which roughly a third are intentional. Bearing that in mind, can you tell me what's interesting about this sad little rodent?

Viewscreens

: Picture of a Norway lemming.

**Merida**  
It doesn't matter whether he's upside down or right way up. He looks exactly the same.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
You certainly-

**Merida**  
No one cares.

**Rapunzel**  
Is this a-

**Merida**  
If he falls on his back, nobody turns him round.

**Rapunzel**  
So is this a lemming?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It's a lemming.

**Merida**  
And he looks like the devil's arsehole, his mouth.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
You certainly wouldn't want a blow-job off him, would you? It'd be a scrapey experience.

It is a lemming, it's a Norway lemming.

**Hiccup**  
They don't actually jump off cliffs.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They don't jump off cliffs.

**Rapunzel**  
It was invented by Disney or somebody?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, dear me.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "MYTH INVENTED BY DISNEY".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It was not invented by Disney, no. There were two myths about it, one that they commit mass suicide, the other that it was Disney who invented the myth.

**Rapunzel**  
Ah, right.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
In fact, they didn't. As early as 1908 in an . . . Arthur Mee's _Children's Encyclopedia_, he talks about them throwing themselves off cliffs into the water.

**Merida**  
They have done it. It was when their migratory path hit a cliff.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They don't really migrate, but they're fantastic breeders. A mother can produce eighty in a year, and when the population swells, they have to move off to find places where they can eat.

**Rapunzel**  
So what are we saying, they _do_ throw themselves off cliffs, or they don't throw themselves off?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They don't. They don't at all.

**Rapunzel**  
They don't.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The Disney film though, you're quite right, was completely faked. I mean they made this film called "White Wilderness"; they had to bus in lemmings from thousands of . . .

**Rapunzel**  
And they . . . they tossed them off the cliff did they?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
They did, well they sort of dropped them in front of camera in a close-up, in a rather pathetic attempt to do it. They're not any more suicidal than any other animal.

**Jack**  
He's actually trying to do his impression of Einstein in that picture.  
[_sticks his tongue out in an impression of the famous photo of Einstein_]

**Rapunzel**  
But his tongue is stuck on both of his teeth.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes, it's a rather sweet little tongue, don't you think? It's a little pretty pink tongue, rather nice. [smiles and shrugs into the following silence]

**Rapunzel**  
Watch out for the teeth.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes.

Anyway, er, this delivers us, damp, but not down-hearted, into the valley of General Ignorance. So, fingers on trumpets please. What was the curse of Tutankhamun?

**Merida**  
[_presses buzzer, which creaks and cackles evilly_]  
You have to queue up for ages.

**Rapunzel**  
The one that's going to lose me another ten points-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes?

**Rapunzel**  
-is that anybody interfering with his tomb would be forever cursed.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the phrase "DEATH TO ALL WHO ENTER HERE".

**Rapunzel**  
So the mere fact, yeah, you see. "Death to all who enter here," yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
The fact is, there is no curse. There never was. There's no inscription that even comes close to being a curse of Tutankhamun, or of any Egyptian tomb ever.

Viewscreens

: Two pictures of the mask of Tutankhamun's mummy.

**Hiccup**  
He looks like Tiger Woods eating a cornetto.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
You're absolutely right!

Erm, Lord Carnarvon, who, er-

**Rapunzel**  
Ah, that's the one.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
-was one of the people with Howard Carter, who first uncovered or excavated the tomb, died very, very soon afterwards from a shaving accident, probably an infected mosquito bite that he cut. And people though, "Ooh, it's cursed!" There was one of the party that had excavated it who died in about 1978, aged ninety-three and the headline was, "Curse of Tutankhamun strikes again!"

Jane Loudon Webb wrote a novel called _The Mummy_ in 1828, about a mummy coming to life and chasing those who had, er, desecrated its tomb. But the fact is that thorough research has shown that only six died within the first decade of the opening and Howard Carter, surely the number one target as the chief of it, er, lived for another seventeen years.

**Rapunzel**  
None of these superstitions should be worried about . . . touch wood.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Hey! Ha ha.

Now, the Great Fire of London destroyed thirteen thousand, two hundred houses, eighty seven churches, forty four livery halls, and over four fifths of the City of London, with a capital "C." How many people died in that five-day conflagration?

**Rapunzel**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the "Twilight Zone" theme_]

**Rapunzel**  
I think it's four people, some very low figure of-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I'm going to give you the points, 'cause it's five people.

**Rapunzel**  
Five people, oh well.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yes, very good. Very good. Only five are recorded. The maid of the baker who started the fire; Paul Lowell, a Shoe Lane watchmaker; an old man who rescued a blanket from St Paul's, but succumbed to the smoke; and two others who fell into their cellars in an ill-fated attempt to recover their goods and chattels. The Mayor, actually, Thomas Bludworth, went back to bed on the first night saying, "a woman might piss it out." The previous Great Fire, in 1212, killed three thousand people.

When does the nursery rhyme Ring A Ring O' Roses date from?

**Rapunzel**  
Ring A Ring O' Roses . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Whence?

**Merida**  
[_presses buzzer, which creaks and cackles evilly_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh, Merida?

**Merida**  
1102.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
A wild stab in the dark-

**Merida**  
Yeah.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
-and not correct, I'm sorry to say.

**Hiccup**  
The plague. The bubonic plague.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Oh dear me, no, I'm afraid not.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "THE PLAGUE".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well, it's nothing to do with the plague or the Black Death at all, er . . . It's a complete misconception. Apart from anything else, this ring . . . A posy is supposed to be a ring of lesions; it doesn't happen. People don't sneeze-[_laughs_]-when they have the plague.

**Rapunzel**  
Obviously! They do, it's the . . . it's the marmots that sneeze on you, you told us that!

**Hiccup**  
Is that not the reason why people say "bless you" when you sneeze?

**Rapunzel**  
No, that's . . . that's 'cause of the devil getting into you when you sneeze.

**Hiccup**  
I thought it was because you had the plague.

**Rapunzel**  
No, no, it's the devil.

**Hiccup**  
People get quite testy sometimes, if they sneeze and you don't say bless you.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
If you don't say bless you, yes.

**Hiccup**  
"You didn't say bless you." "Oh, !# * off."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
That was one hell of a garden party at Buckingham Palace, wasn't it? It really was. You made quite a name for yourself.

It's a very late eighteenth century American song; first recorded in 1881, but apparently written earlier; has nothing to do with the plague whatsoever.

So, what did the man who invented lateral thinking suggest as a solution to solve the Middle East conflict?

Viewscreens

: Picture of Edward de Bono between a picture of a Palestinean man and one of an Israeli man.

**Rapunzel**  
Is that Edward de Bono in the middle, is he . . . is he lateral thinking?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Edward de Bono is the man. He invented lateral thinking.

**Merida**  
Have a game of football; sort it out that way.

**Rapunzel**  
They could play in the old Gaza Strip, couldn't they?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Yeah, I'll give you fifty points if you get this, 'cause it's so peculiar.

**Rapunzel**  
Thinking laterally.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
_Well_ laterally. I mean so lateral, it's off the scale.

**Hiccup**  
They play Monopoly.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
It's weirder than that.

**Jack**  
They all go to the Dead Sea, right, they flip over the wrong way, and whoever can turn over quickest wins.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
But this man, this premier thinker of our time, Edward de Bono, suggested sending Marmite to the Middle East.

He reasoned thus, and I use the word "reasoned" quite loosely, erm . . . He reasoned that on both sides of the conflict there was a lot of unleavened bread being eaten, and unleavened bread has a shortage of zinc. And a lack of zinc causes aggression. So he planned, as the easiest way as he saw it, to restore the zinc levels to both sides . . . was to send them lots of Marmite, which is rich in the stuff.

**Rapunzel**  
But the whole point about Marmite . . . They advertise it on the basis that some people love it and some people hate it. So he'd have solved the problem, then they'd have wars between the . . . the pro-Marmiters and the anti-Marmiters! They'd be back to warfare again!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
He didn't think it through, did he?

**Rapunzel**  
Where do you stand on Bovril, do you like it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
I never stand on Bovril. It's a stupid thing to do. But I don't like the taste of it, I have to say.

**Merida**  
And did he put that forward as a serious suggestion, or was it one of those days where he just . . . when he was taking the day off?

**Hiccup**  
Five to five on a Friday. "All right, here's one."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
This was a . . . a Foreign Office committee he was talking to, it wasn't just something he said in the pub. He was on a think-tank and he was reporting to the Foreign Office and they were listening to him. "Marmite."

**Hiccup**  
They should have done it in Ulster.

**Rapunzel**  
Yes.

**Hiccup**  
Should have made that the homeland for the Jews. Just for fun!

**Rapunzel**  
Like a sort of problem theme park, all in one place.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Well, I think we've come to the end. That leaves the _divertissement_ of the score. We're going to start with tonight's "I'm afraid didn't do quite as well as anybody else-er", and it's Rapunzel Fitzherbert with minus-twenty-four points.

**Rapunzel**  
Oh, least! I got many more than that.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
And in a very creditable third place, Hiccup Haddock with minus-fifteen. Then comes Merida with minus-eight.

**Merida**  
Thank you.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
With a staggering zero, it's Jack Frost.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
But that means tonight's shock winner, with two points, is the audience!

[_Shots of the audience, who cheer and applaud themselves._]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake nochi**  
Bravo. Never happened before.

Well, on that _bombshell_, the time has come to leave the shadow of the valley of death behind us. Thank you to Rapunzel, Jack, Merida, and Hiccup, and I leave you with this thought, courtesy of the great Johnny Carson. "For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off." Do be careful out there. Good night.


	2. Chapter 2: Electricity

**Qi, Electricity**

* * *

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**

Well, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to _QI_, for another reckless poke of the screwdriver into the fusebox of the unknown. Joining me in the cupboard under the stairs tonight are the slightly shocking Flynn Rider . . .

**Flynn**  
Thank you.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
The very "current" Bunnymund . . . the positively electromagnetic Astrid Hofferson . . . and the wiry young shaver socket, Hiccup Haddock!

Tonight, we cast an eclectic light on the subject of electricity. Let's complete the circuit. Flynn goes:

**Flynn**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of crackling electricity_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Astrid goes:

**Astrid**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a thunderstrike_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Bunnymund goes:

**Bunnymund**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a mad scientist laughing and shouting, "He's alive!"_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
And Hiccup goes:

**Hiccup**  
[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a switch being thrown_]

The whole studio, except for minimal lighting of the viewscreens and

QI_ logo, is thrown into darkness._

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh, Hiccup. Thank you, Hiccup.

Now, don't forget: Each edition in the "E" series encloses an elephant. All right? The first to spot it by waving your Elephant card will win our generous "Elephant in the Room" bonus-

Viewscreens

: The Elephant in the Room card displays and trumpets.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-like so. Otherwise, simply electrify me with interestingness. Anyway, the atmosphere is already absolutely, erm-[_snaps distractedly, searching for the word_].

**Hiccup**  
Electric.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "ELECTRIC".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! Oh, Hiccup. Oh-h, Hiccup. Oh, you'll have to do better than that.

Now. Question one, I think. I'm naked. It's . . . it's . . .

**Hiccup**  
[_furtively glances below the desk at Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's pouring with rain. Can you give me a good reason why I should crouch down with my bottom in the air?

**Astrid**  
[_presses buzzer, which thunderstrikes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Astrid.

**Astrid**  
Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi, I wouldn't have thought you'd need a good reason.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_hides his face in both fists_] Thank you very much. Thank you for that.

**Bunnymund**  
I don't think you need a good reason 'cause I don't think anybody's even gonna approach you to ask you what you're doing. It's a clear signal you want some time alone.

**Flynn**  
I'm just . . . picturing that image.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes.

**Flynn**  
It's one of the most erotic I've ever . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's-

**Flynn**  
I think it'd make a great "Athena" poster. Your buttocks in the rain, dripping rain. Put it on bedroom walls up and down the country.

**Hiccup**  
I think it's because your bottom is the least likely part of you to be struck by lightning.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You're . . . sort of in the right . . . right area. Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
I'm going . . . I'm going with the "electric" thing.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You're absolutely right. It is to do with lightning. Apparently, it's a very good stance to adopt if you're caught in a lightning storm.

**Hiccup**  
Or can you just drop your trousers and moon?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah. That might work.

**Hiccup**  
[_standing up and pretending to moon_] "Lighting, everyone!"

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
What should you _not_ do?

**Hiccup**  
Go and, erm, climb to the top of a pylon, or something like that . . . Hold a 40-foot metal pole . . . [_to the heavens_] "Come on!"

**Bunnymund**  
Don't put on a metal hat on the golf course.

**Hiccup**  
Don't stand under a tree.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
What is the problem with being under a tree? Why . . . Why is that bad?

**Hiccup**  
Because they're more likely to be struck by lightning.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
And what happens when they are?

**Hiccup**  
There's a big flash, a lot of flame . . .

**Flynn**  
And all . . . all the squirrels fall on your head; knock you out.

**Hiccup**  
You might get burned . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah, well, the sap boils in an instantaneous way, and the tree explodes.

**Flynn**  
Wow.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
And you'll get covered in splinters. The best thing to do would be to get into a car.

**Hiccup**  
Really?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
And drive . . . away from the rain.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Just close the door and stay in the car. It acts as what's called a Faraday cage. It bars, if you like, electromagnetic fielda. It's actually thirteen million volts you can get in a bolt of lightning.

**Hiccup**  
[_breathlessly_] Why can't we _harness_ that power, Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well . . . Do you think you're more likely to be struck if you're a man or a woman?

**Flynn**  
Man. Well, men are out and about a lot more, aren't they?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You are, actually, six times more likely to be struck if you're a man.

**Hiccup**  
A man always has to hold the umbrella, because if the woman holds the umbrella, it keeps jabbing the man in the eye. And that's why he's more likely to be struck.

**Astrid**  
Is it because women wear more rubber than men? It just, kind of, conducts through them? 'Cause a lot of women wear rubber pants.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Do they, now?

**Astrid**  
Did you not know that?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
No. No. Not really my area. The . . . The . . . The wire . . . Do you have wire in bras?

**Astrid**  
[_looks over her shoulder_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Do you? [_chortles at Astrid's reaction_] I mean, does _one_?

**Astrid**  
You do if you have massive knockers that are in danger of injuring people-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Right. And they need-

**Astrid**  
-and I do fall into that category.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You're not doing badly, I have to say. You're very . . .

**Astrid**  
Thank you, yes. A lot-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
A fulsome pair of funbags there. . . . But, erm-

**Astrid**  
You know what? That was almost heterosexual.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_makes a noise of consent_] I may be on the turn.

**Hiccup**  
[_to Astrid_] But it wasn't, though, was it.

**Astrid**  
[_laughs and shakes her head_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
No. No. Erm . . .

**Flynn**  
I'd like to hear you whisper that when you're bent over, naked, in the rain. "A fulsome pair of funbags!"

**Hiccup**  
While people around you are getting struck by lightning.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
The . . . The . . . The wire won't attract the lightning, but it will superheat when you're struck. You could burn yourself.

**Astrid**  
So your bosoms . . . blow up!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Astrid**  
How exciting. I'm gonna have a go.

**Hiccup**  
There's an actor I worked with, and he was once walking along the street, and a manhole cover right next to him got struck by lightning, and it flew up in the air and landed on his head.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Instead of being hit by a manhole, he should have been _showing_ his manhole to the lightning.

**Hiccup**  
Yeah!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But, erm . . . Anyway.

But the quite interesting thing is: How often does lightning strike the earth? On an average day.

**Astrid**  
Four.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
"Four." [_patronisingly_] So we've got "four". I can say that it's _more than four_. Anybody would like to-

**Astrid**  
Is it five?

**Bunnymund**  
How could you-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's 17 million times a day.

**Hiccup**  
No way.

**Astrid**  
No way.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It means about 200 times a second.

**Hiccup**  
Why can't we _harness_ that power, Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_laughing_] We . . . Perhaps we should . . .

How many people in Britain each year do you imagine are killed by lightning strikes?

**Hiccup**  
Twelve.

**Flynn**  
None.

**Astrid**  
Thirty.

**Hiccup**  
Two.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's between three and six, actually. It's not very many.

**Hiccup**  
[_waggles his hand to show an estimate_] Four or five.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes. "Four or five" would do it! [_to Bunnymund_] In Australia?

**Bunnymund**  
Probably a lot more-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Bunnymund**  
-because, uh, there's more of us.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
10 Australians a year die of it, and, er, about a hundred are injured. There was an American: seven times he was struck. Er, he . . . he was a park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park.

**Bunnymund**  
I know that guy.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well . . . he did die in 1983.

**Bunnymund**  
[_pause_] I knew him in 1982, the last time he got hit.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Do you know how he died?

**Bunnymund**  
He was very _testy_. Very irritable.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
His name was Roy Sullivan. He actually-

**Bunnymund**  
That's not what they called him, though.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
No. No.

**Bunnymund**  
They called him "Burnie"!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
He shot himself in 1983.

**Bunnymund**  
Aw, jeez.

**Hiccup**  
He should have just crouched down with his manhole in the air!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Exactly. The point is, if you're caught in an electrical storm, you _don't_ want to shelter under a tree. The _best_ thing to do is to get into your car, but failing that, crouch down into a ball with your head down to your knees and, er, hands clasped behind your head.

Now, I have a conundrum for you. Can horses catch eels?

Viewscreens

: Picture of a horse next to a picture of an eel.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
That's a rather attractive horse, actually, isn't it?

**Hiccup**  
[_raises his eyebrows and looks at Astrid_]

**Flynn**  
Yeah. But personally-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's a very beautiful horse!

**Flynn**  
Yes.

**Bunnymund**  
Not a bad looking eel, either.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You prefer the eel.

**Flynn**  
I like the eel.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
There's more you can do with the eel, possibly. But the, erm . . . The horse-

**Bunnymund**  
Oh, boy. Oh, God.

**Flynn**  
It's very hard to get a horse down your pants!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! That genuinely is a very attractive horse.

[_Silence for several seconds._]

**Flynn**  
Yeah. Yeah.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Mm. Nice hair. No.

**Flynn**  
I bet he's a wanker, that horse! I bet he runs around going, "Look at me." [_purses his lips_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But anyway, can horses catch eels? That's the question.

**Flynn**  
I . . . I think they can.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
How would they go about it?

**Hiccup**  
A net.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
There was this German who observed, in South America, the way humans used horses to catch eels. A very particular kind of eel-

**Astrid**  
Was it an electric eel?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It was, because that's our theme of the day.

**Astrid**  
Yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It was an electric eel. How would you use a horse to catch an electric eel? Why can't you catch an electric eel in the water?

**Astrid**  
Did they get it to get, sort of, like, hold out a fork with a bit of bread on it and try and get the eels to toast it with their electricity?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well . . .

**Hiccup**  
You have to be on horseback, because otherwise, you get electrocuted? Something like that?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well, the problem with catching an electric eel is that, yes, you would get a very nasty shock. 650 volts in a . . . in a . . .

**Hiccup**  
Put you right off it!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
So I'm afraid the horses were sent into the water, where the electric eels went crazy, and discharged all their electricity, until all their batteries were flat, and then they could be safely harvested. And the poor horses, of course, often had heart attacks and died of fright or drowned, and got very upset, so it was rather mean-

**Astrid**  
"Got very upset"?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes. "Distressed" is the word we use of animals.

**Hiccup**  
[_with arms folded, petulantly_] "I don't like it in the water. The eels! Oww-ww!"

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
They wouldn't do it to that nice, pretty one, I hope.

**Flynn**  
Yeah.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But, erm-

**Hiccup**  
You like the tousseled hair look.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I have to-

**Hiccup**  
There are boys all over England _doing_ themselves, and you're . . . They're gonna send you horse-y photos.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_clears his throat pointedly_] So, erm . . .

Half an electric eel's whole physiology is devoted to creating electricity, so they've got quite a powerful kick, but once it's used up, they're . . . then they're easy to catch. They're not actually eels, oddly enough. They're a sort of knife fish. Sixty-nine species there are of electric fish, including the torpedo fish. And the torpedo fish comes from the Latin "torpore", meaning "to numb". It was used as an anesthetic by the Romans, and from that, the underwater missile was named.

Now, here's a big question. In 1903, Thomas Alva Edison released a movie whose title consisted of three words, two of which begin with "E". What was it, and who starred in it?

**Astrid**  
[_holds up her Elephant cutout_] I know! We've nearly forgotten them-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Ah!

**Astrid**  
-but here it is!

Viewscreens

: The "Elephant in the Room" card displays and trumpets.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh, Elephant in the Room. Well, you are absolutely right. It was, actually, called "Electrocuting an Elephant". He made a film in which an elephant-

**Astrid**  
[_waves her Elephant cutout from side to side_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-was electrocuted . . . [_notices Astrid_]. Hurray! You win those points.

**Astrid**  
How many points?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Ten points.

**Astrid**  
Oh, ten points!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Now, why would Edison want to electrocute an elephant?

**Hiccup**  
He wanted to electrocute the biggest thing he could find, to show that he was the best at electrocuting.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well, actually, it was the reverse, you see. He believed that his direct current was safe, and wouldn't hurt people, and didn't electrocute. He wanted to destroy the reputation of alternating current, which was owned by Westinghouse, so he used the word "westinghoused" to mean "electrocuted". And this elephant, Topsy, was sentenced to death on Coney Island, because Topsy had killed three human beings and was going to be hanged, or was going to be poisoned; was going to happen to Topsy-

**Hiccup**  
"Hanged"!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I know! It's . . . It's . . . It's quite a picture, isn't it?

**Hiccup**  
[_groans hoarsely as though he were an elephant being hanged_]  
[_slams his hands heavily on the table_]

[_At the impact, Hiccup's Elephant cutout, which had been suspended over the side of the desk, very appropriately falls to the floor._]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
And . . . Oh-h! Poor elephant!

**Hiccup**  
[_picks up his cutout_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
So, Edison won the right to electrocute him in public to show how dangerous it was. [_American accent_] "This thing you're letting into your homes will kill an elephant!" And he filmed it, as . . . as a PR film, to show that-

**Bunnymund**  
Yeah. It's like a snuff film.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
A snuff film! Exactly. Yeah. He gave it 460 grams of cyanide and potassium, in carrots; he had wooden sandals lined with copper put on her feet-it's a she elephant, I should say-and then a current of 6,600 volts sent through her body. "She died without a trumpet or a groan," apparently. And he filmed the event; tried to persuade people to refer to electrocution as being "westinghoused".

**Bunnymund**  
He . . . He trampled . . . He trampled . . . He just went nuts and trampled the . . .

**Flynn**  
No, no, he hid in their rooms when they came home. He jumped out; strangled them . . . And he got away with it for months!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Wearing a Jason mask.

**Flynn**  
Nobody would have caught him if . . . but for a few tell-

**Hiccup**  
A cunning disguise!

**Flynn**  
A few telltale signs around the flat.

**Hiccup**  
A big elephant-shaped hole in the wall.

**Flynn**  
Yeah.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
The first murder on Topsy's hands was killing a trainer who, frankly, deserved to die, because this trainer gave her a lit cigarette to eat.

**Hiccup**  
[_laughs shortly_] It killed him?

Stephan  
Yeah! Quite right, yeah.

**Hiccup**  
[_spits out an imaginary cigarette and furiously pounds the table as though stomping on the trainer_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
"Don't do _that_ again!" Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
I like the sound of Topsy.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
Don't mess with her. She's a bit . . .

**Flynn**  
Do you know that some elephants are evolving now that don't have tusks? Did you know that? Because . . . Because they're . . . The . . . The ones with tusks get poached, right? Get shot. So the ones that . . . with smaller tusks-right-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes.

**Flynn**  
-don't get shot, so that gene, of the small tusk gene, lives on more frequently, and eventually, elephants are gonna . . . and there's elephants being born now that don't grow tusks. [_pauses to complete silence_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I like that . . .

**Flynn**  
[_pretends to shoot two guns in the air before holstering them proudly_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I like it.

**Flynn**  
There's some . . . There's some tigers now that are being made of axminster.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_laughs_] Now, stop it! [muttering] Nice animals, really. Not as sexy as certain horses, but . . . [_growls_]. Anyway!

Let's . . . Let's raise the stakes, now, with something a little more technical. How fast do the electrons move along an electric wire?

**Hiccup**  
[_shaking his head_] They don't. They just-

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "THEY DON'T".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh, dear. They _do_ move. The very words we thought you might use.

**Flynn**  
Really?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Flynn**  
I would have . . . I would have said something-

**Hiccup**  
_Really_ fast.

**Flynn**  
-that's very, very, very, very fast, but also-

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "VERY FAST".

**Flynn**  
I said I _would_ have said that! I _would_ have said that! I would . . . I said I didn't say that!

I would have actually, probably, said something . . . thirty, forty miles an hour. Something deceptively slow.

**Astrid**  
I would have said it's a bit of a crap question, really.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Why is that?

**Astrid**  
Well, because modern physicists see electrons as something you would call probability density functions.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
That is an absolutely precise description of what quantum physics _does_ call an electron, and I am immensely impressed, and I have to give you five points for that, if not ten!

**Astrid**  
[_does a dance of honour in her seat_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
That's astounding! They are exactly that. They do call them that.

They are dimensionless entities that are quite hard to understand, but they do travel along electrical wires. But the interesting thing is, you're right to say "slow"; they're actually point-naught-three miles per hour. Snail's pace along the wire. But electricity itself is incredibly quick. You have to think of . . . of waves. If you had a tube full of marbles, and you . . . you pushed a marble in one end, another marble would come out the other end almost instantaneously. But the marbles inside are traveling very, very slowly. It's the wavefront that moves very, very fast. And that's how the electrons travel along. Literally at a snail's pace. About the same speed as a snail, each one.

**Hiccup**  
Does that work if you get ten snails together? If you push the end snail . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
We'll . . . We'll try that in my dressing room later.

**Hiccup**  
The other one's gonna go, "Whoa!" [_looks behind him in surprise_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's a lovely . . . It's a lovely experiment. It must be done.

And now, we come onto our experimental round. What is the most interesting thing you can do with the objects on the trays beneath your desks?

[_The panellists reach under their desks to pull out a tray holding a lasagne in a metal container, a black electrical wire, and a gherkin._]

**Bunnymund**  
Oh!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Tell the boys and girls what you have.

**Hiccup**  
I have a lasagne . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You have a lasagne . . .

**Hiccup**  
. . . a gherkin, which I'm liable to eat, 'cause I'm raveous . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
A gherkin . . .

**Hiccup**  
I've got a bit of a cable . . . You can heat it up? You can heat the gherkin. You can heat the lasagne.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_makes indistinct whistling and clicking sounds of dissent_]

**Flynn**  
No, you plug it in-

**Hiccup**  
You plug the thing into the thing . . . With the tiny little-

**Flynn**  
I think this is how Hiccup Sugar started Amstrad. [_attaches the wire to the gherkin and the lasagne_] That's one of his first computers. "There you go, thirty quid."

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You're absolutely right; you've . . . you've done the right thing . . .

**Flynn**  
It's a . . . It's some kind of a . . . Gherkins, because they're pickled . . . and then, I don't know anything. [_smiles happily_]

**Hiccup**  
[_pretends to be electrocuted by the gherkin_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
That's honest. If nothing else, that's pretty honest.

**Hiccup**  
[_pretends to pull away from the current_] Jesus!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But, yes-

**Astrid**  
[_holds up her contraption so that the wire is vertical_]  
This is part of Kate Moss's new range at Top Shop.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_French accent_] Size zéro!

It's . . .

**Hiccup**  
[_crying_] Nothing's happening!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
No, but, the gherkin will behave as a lightbulb. If you put a charge through a gherkin, it will glow. The lasagne can provide the power. Because it's salty, and salt is an electrolyte, the two types of metal in the lid and in the pan, as long as they're not touching each other and shorting out . . .

One of our Elves experimented over the weekend, demonstrating how a gherkin lightbulb works, and you can see a lit gherkin. This is one of our Elves. Just the other day.

Viewscreens

: Video of someone plugging in a wire that is attached to a gherkin suspended between two wooden slats.  
After a few seconds, the gherkin starts to spark and light up.

**Flynn**  
Wow!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Isn't that great?

**Flynn**  
It's like kids TV in the '70s, isn't it?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah!

**Flynn**  
Where's the lasagne?

Viewscreens

: The wire is unplugged.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
There we are, and then we . . . unplug.

Well, the lasagne . . . Unfortunately, you would need a lasagne, perhaps appropariately, the size of the floorplan of the Gherkin building-

**Astrid**  
I'm having one of those when I get home tonight.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-which is about five football pitches worth of lasagne.

**Flynn**  
So if I'm cycling home tonight, I shouldn't put a lasagne on my crossbar like that. "No, I've got lights, officer! . . . Careful, it's hot!"

[_holding up his lasagne/gherkin contraption_] These'll be in the shops soon.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Flynn**  
The lasagnePod. [_sticks the gherkin in his ear and pretends to bop his head to music_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Erm, as far as trying this at home goes, wiring a gherkin to the electric lights, erm . . . Don't obviously. I mean, obviously, be sensible, and erm . . .

**Hiccup**  
Eat it.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
. . . don't do anything because I tell you to or tell you _not_ to. Erm . . . [_suddenly, to camera_] Live your own lives! Er, essentially. Try and do that if you can.

**Hiccup**  
Shag horses!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah!

**Hiccup**  
Come on!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah. Well, now, in an abrupt _volte-face_, er, we turn face to face with the ghastly spectre of General Ignorance, so fingers on electrical devices, if you would. What is the difference between a ship and a boat?

**Astrid**  
[_presses buzzer, which thunderstrikes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes, Astrid.

**Astrid**  
Has a ship got curtains?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_laughs into his closed fist_]

**Flynn**  
Yeah.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
That's just about the oddest answer I've ever heard to any question.

**Astrid**  
No?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I . . . A ship may have curtains, but so may a boat.

**Hiccup**  
Ships are bigger!

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "SHIPS ARE BIGGER".

**Astrid**  
[_waves her arms happily from side to side_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! Oh, Hiccy, Hiccy, Wiccy.

**Hiccup**  
They _are_ bigger. [_with sudden inspiration_] Ships have lifeboats; boats don't have lifeboats; they're already a boat.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well, we're talking navy, here. We're talking navy. In the navy, a ship is any vessel which is . . . ?

**Bunnymund**  
Named.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
No . . . Surface. I.e., ships, frigates, destroyers: anything like that. Except little dinghys and lifeboats, which are boats, I grant you.

**Hiccup**  
A boat is a submarine?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But a boat is a submarine. And some submarines are bigger than three frigates put together.

**Astrid**  
So what's the difference? I'm afraid I've failed to-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
A boat is a submarine.

**Hiccup**  
[_as though speaking to a child_] Submarine goes _underwater_. [_poises his hands as though explaining something difficult_]

**Astrid**  
But what about-

**Flynn**  
-one that doesn't?

**Hiccup**  
[_to Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi_] Sorry, Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi. [_turns back to Astrid_]

**Astrid**  
What about a-[_breaks off and laughs at Hiccup's "explaining face"_].

**Hiccup**  
A ship is on the surface . . .

**Astrid**  
A rowing boat. Is that a ship, then?

**Hiccup**  
You don't have them in the navy!

**Astrid**  
Yes, you do!

**Hiccup**  
They're not that shit! [turns in his chair] Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi, they don't have rowing boats in the navy, do they.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
They might have oars on a lifeboat, which is a boat, I grant you.

**Hiccup**  
[_folds his arms, slightly defeated_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
But it . . . But there's not a vessel of the line.

**Astrid**  
Is it a "rowing ship", then? So are-

**Hiccup**  
If it's in the navy, yes! It is. It's a rowing ship.

**Astrid**  
So the only boats in the navy are submarines.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
All . . . Yes.

**Astrid**  
That's complete bollocks.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's true. The only vessels of the line that are called a boat are submarines, in the navy.

**Astrid**  
I don't . . . I . . . I fail to agree.

**Bunnymund**  
That's right. And I'll tell you something else. There's not two moons.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
A ship . . . In German, there's _der Schiff_ and there's _das Boot_. I don't know which is which.

**Astrid**  
_Das Boot_.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's spelt with two Os, but pronounced "boat".

**Astrid**  
No, it isn't!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes, it is.

**Astrid**  
It's pronounced _Boot_.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
It's not pronounced _Boot_-

**Astrid**  
Yes, it is!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-unless you're in . . . from Newcastle.

**Hiccup**  
I was in Germany once, for the World Cup, and these two lads came up and said, "Do you know where a _Jumphaus_ is?" Jumphaus.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
"Jumphaus."

**Hiccup**  
"Jump house" is a-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
-slang term for a brothel, turns out!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah. Modern German-

**Hiccup**  
And as soon as they said it-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
-I immediately knew it.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You knew it? "Jumphaus." Hey!

**Hiccup**  
"There." [_points up to his right_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_vague German accent_] There's something so camp about modern German, though. [_starting to pat himself down_] You know, they . . . [_normal accent_] Do you know what they call a mobile phone? [_shakes his head_] It's just so typically camp.

**Astrid**  
A "Handy".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
"Mein Handy. . . . [_with great fluttering of wrists and delicate patting of his suit_] Oh, wo ist mein Handy? Ich habe mein Handy verloren! Oh! Where is my Handy?"

**Hiccup**  
Are you hosting . . . Are you hosting . . . Are you hosting the BAFTAs this year?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_laughs_] Not . . . No.

**Hiccup**  
No? Aw, it's a shame, 'cause I was gonna say, you should do it in that voice.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_laughs_]  
[_camp German accent_] "Hello, and welcome to the BAFTAs. Stop it! No."

Anyway! Anyway, yes. It's a purely naval tradition. It's no . . . In true English, you could call it a ship or a boat, and who could say "nay"? But that was the nature of our question, and a foolish one it was.

As well as inventing the battery, Alessandro Volta, after whom the volt is named, also discovered methane. Which animal contributes most methane to the atmosphere?

**Astrid**  
[_presses buzzer, which thunderstrikes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yes.

**Astrid**  
Cow.

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "COW".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! No, no.

**Hiccup**  
[_presses buzzer, which buzzes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! Yes.

**Hiccup**  
[_confidently_] Ants. No! No. Termites!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-is the right answer! [_drums on the desk_] Well _done_.

**Hiccup**  
I only . . . I only know that because I had a swanky showbiz lunch with the producer the other day and he let it slip.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_gasps_] Aww! What do I _do_, ladies and gentlemen? For the honesty, I'm inclined to let you keep your points.

**Flynn**  
What sort . . . What sort of showbiz lunch do you talk about termite farts?

**Hiccup**  
Well . . .

**Flynn**  
Where's your career going?

**Hiccup**  
This _is_ my career, mate. You're _in_ it!

**Astrid**  
Can I just say, I was there-

**Hiccup**  
Did you-

**Astrid**  
-and I completely ignored it!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Methane is a much worse, er, greenhouse gas than CO2; in fact, it's about twenty-three times worse. They are staggeringly populous.

**Flynn**  
Well, why don't we feed them on something like a clear soup? A nice broth that hasn't got any, sort of, you know, pungent vegetable matter in. Just-[_pretends to slurp at a broth_].

**Hiccup**  
You could never make that many little termite bowls!

**Flynn**  
You . . . Yeah, you-

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
How do cows produce methane? What do cows do to get-

**Hiccup**  
Farting.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
They don't fart it. They burp it, oddly enough, cows.

**Hiccup**  
Jesus.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I mean, they-

**Hiccup**  
So if you went around with a lighter, and they went-[_burps_] . . . [_mimes shooting flames out of his mouth_].

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Presumably, yes!

**Hiccup**  
That sounds like Toothless.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Your dragon, very good.

**Hiccup**  
They burped a little methane; set light . . . "Ahh, the dragon!"

**Bunnymund**  
How did you two end up having a dinner with the producer?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Uh-oh! You weren't invited?

**Bunnymund**  
Who bought you lunch?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Were you not invited?

**Bunnymund**  
No.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I wasn't invited.

**Bunnymund**  
You want to see what I've got? [_unceremoniously slams his lasagne on the desk_]  
[_gestures to Flynn, who's presumably in the same boat, and then accusingly at Astrid and Hiccup_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Anyway, back to termites.

**Flynn**  
Yes.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
They have suicide bombers. Termites have suicide bombers-

**Hiccup**  
Really?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-who guard the hill. Yeah. And when predators approach, they explode and produce a sticky mess, which glues the place up. Prevents ants from attacking them.

All righty. Now. Why do thousands of Americans call the emergency services on Christmas day?

**Astrid**  
[_presses buzzer, which thunderstrikes_]  
'Cause they haven't got any friends?

**Bunnymund**  
Yeah, if you're lonely and drunk, and, uh . . . They get . . . They get a touch tone phone and go-[_to the tune of "Jingle Bells"_]-911, 911, 64324 . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Very good.

**Flynn**  
Is it because they eat so much that their fingers chub up, and they get all-

Forfeit

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "THEY'VE EATEN TOO MUCH".

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Oh! That is not the reason. What happens on Christmas day that's particular to that day?

**Hiccup**  
Presents in the morning . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Presents.

**Flynn**  
So they phone up . . . They thank the fire brigade for their presents.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
What-

**Hiccup**  
They get things that, you know, they hurt themselves with.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
_Or make calls with_. Suppose somebody gave you-

**Astrid**  
Is it a _Handy_?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-a mobile phone, _ein Handy_-

**Astrid**  
_Ein Handy!_

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
-_für Weihnacht_. And it was your first mobile phone, you're very excited by it-

**Hiccup**  
They'd say, "Have you got the receipt?"

**Astrid**  
And you slipped and went up your arse or something.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well . . .

**Flynn**  
Yeah, so you phone up the emergency service just to see if it's worked.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Because you can't call anybody else up because you haven't got a network yet. All phones in America, whether they've got a SIM card in them or not, have to, by law, be able to call 911, the emergency services.

**Astrid**  
Does that annoy the emergency services?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I would imagine it drives them batty! Yeah!

Lastly, we've come to the end of our quizlet, and we have one more question. And it's on the subject of electricity, our favourite subject. Why wouldn't a Russian family call their son "Powerstation" or "Industrialisation"?

**Hiccup**  
'Cause they're not names, are they. It would be stupid.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
'Cause they're not names?

**Hiccup**  
They're not names.

**Flynn**  
No. They're not names.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
They are. They are. They were.

**Hiccup**  
[_presses buzzer, which buzzes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Whoop. Yeah.

**Hiccup**  
They are names! [_narrows his eyes_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
So why _wouldn't_ they call their son-

**Hiccup**  
They're unpopular names.

**Flynn**  
Because they're girls' names.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
"Because they're girls' names" is the right answer!

**Hiccup**  
Girls names!

**Astrid**  
Well done.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well done. "Powerstation" is "Elektrostanciya" . . . is a girls' name, and "Industrializaciya" is also a girls' name, but, if you had a boy, you could call him "Kombain", which is "combine harvester", or you could call him "Dvatcat' Tret'e Fevralya", which is "the 23rd of February".

But this is actually a tradition in the . . . the rustic area, if you like. In Ukraine, there are names like "Ne Vbui, Bat'ku": "Don't kill me, Father". Would you believe.

**Flynn**  
Is it like the, you know, the . . . I don't know if it's a red Indian thing where they . . . You come out of the wigwam, and the first thing you'd see . . .

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Right.

**Flynn**  
So they'd come out and see a power station.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Well-

**Astrid**  
Do you know what Snotlout's, er, Native American name is?

**Flynn**  
What?

**Astrid**  
"Sits In Front of Telly Farting."

**Flynn**  
I imagine if you said it quickly, it sounds quite nice.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah.

**Astrid**  
It does.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
You call him Sitzie.

**Flynn**  
Sits-in-telly-farting.

**Hiccup**  
If you say it in a Russian accent.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
Yeah. [_Russian accent_] "Sits in front of telly, farting."

**Hiccup**  
[_Russian accent_] Sits-in-telly-farting.

**Astrid**  
I like your . . . I like your sort of camp German accent the best.

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_camp German accent_] Oh, shut up.

**Astrid**  
And I would like you to . . . Can you just do "Handy" again for me?

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I . . . [_breaks off in laughter and starts patting himself_]. [_camp German accent_] "Wo ist mein Handy?" . . .

I'm being very bad.

**Hiccup**  
Before we close, Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi: The horse is actually here!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
[_overjoyed_] Wey-hey!

Now, then! Well, I don't know actually. I think we've reached-

**Hiccup**  
[_flips his head from side to side like a prim horse_]  
[_neighs alluringly_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
I have reached the end of my fuse, and it's time to look at the scores. With her name in lights . . . !

**Astrid**  
[_leans forward expectantly_] Surely not!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
With ten points is Astrid Hofferson!

**Astrid**  
[_looks skyward and pretends to be overcome with joy_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
In second place, with one point Bunnymund!

**Bunnymund**  
[_narrows his eyes and shakes his head_]

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
In third place, with minus twelve points, it's Flynn Rider!

**Flynn**  
Thank you!

**Vsyo-vo Mrake Nochi**  
And finally, with minus twenty-one points is Hiccup Haddock!

So, with our duties electrically discharged, that's "good bye" from Bunnymund, Flynn, Astrid, Hiccup, and me. Good night.


	3. Chapter 3: Endings

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Hello and indeed goodbye from QI, where tonight, the end is nigh. For an exciting photo finish, I'm joined by the Four Jockeys of the Apocalypse and they are: Mr Jack Frost . . . Mr Pitch Black. . . Dearest Mother Gothel . . . and Master Hiccup Haddock. Now, before . . . Before we plunge up into our elbows in the Seven Bowls of Wrath, let me remind you about our regular Elephant in the Room bonus.

**Viewscreens**

: The Elephant in the Room card displays and trumpets.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There are extra points for spotting any pachyderms on my person this evening, but now, let's hear how you all intend to end it all. And Pitch goes:

**Pitch**

[_presses buzzer, which plays a church bell chiming once_]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi

And Jack goes:

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a guillotine dropping_] [_looks mildly disturbed_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Mother Gothel goes:

**Mother Gothel**

[_presses buzzer, which plays a country and western dance_] [_looks baffled_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, that's nice. And Hiccup goes:

**Hiccup**

[_presses buzzer, which starts to play Dudley Moore's piano piece "And The Same To You"_]

_Ten seconds in, the piece continues unabated. _

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_impatiently nods along to the buzzer_]

**Hiccup**

[_stares into space_]

_While Jack and Pitch look on amusedly, the piece changes strains as_ _though drawing to a close._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Lovely . . . [_is cut off by a continuation of the original melody_ and _looks down helplessly_]

_The piece storms into a crescendo . . ._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Excellent!

_. . . then rises out of its faux-concluding chords and carries on._

**Hiccup**

[_touches his top lip awkwardly_]

_The piece continues for several more seconds, then gives a brief, suspenseful pause._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Great. [_looks down and holds breath_]

_The three final chords of the piece bang out triumphantly._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Thank you, Hiccup!

**Mother Gothel **and **Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
[_sigh in relief_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Superb. I think I detected the hand of the late, great Dudley Moore in your buzzer, there.

Now, that brings us to our final question. What were the last words of General Sedgwick in the wilderness of Spotsylvania?

**Viewscreens**

: Two pictures of General John Sedgwick with a blank speech bubble. His mouth is hidden by his beard.

**Hiccup**  
He hasn't got a mouth.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes.

**Hiccup**

So . . . there weren't any words at all! Unless he wrote them down.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

In a convenient bubble that he Frostied around with him. Erm . . .

**Hiccup**

Maybe he had a little notebook with bubble shaped things and he just . . . [_holds an imaginary speech bubble by his mouth_].

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I'll tell you that the year is 1864. What war was going on then?

**Hiccup**

Franco-Prussian War.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That was a tiny bit later.

**Hiccup**

The Hundred-Years, Thirty Years, Twenty-Five Years . . .

**Jack**

The Civil . . . American Civil War.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

The American Civil War. We're talking about the gen-

**Hiccup**

The American Civil War.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yeah, well done!

**Mother Gothel**

General . . .

**Hiccup**

[_hits buzzer, which starts to play "And The Same To You"_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_waving furiously at Hiccup_]  
NO, NO! DON'T! [_leans back in despair_] No! You bastard!

**Mother Gothel**

[_holds arms towards Hiccup in exasperation_] Oh!

_Unlike at the start of the show, the buzzer cuts out prematurely at eight seconds._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ah! Thank you for cutting that off.

**Hiccup**

[_unfazed_]  
The American Civil War.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It is the American Civil War. That was not, however, the question.

**Hiccup**

Spotsylvania is in, er, near to Pennsylvania.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's Virginia, in fact. It's in the state of Virginia. He was actually with a hundred-thousand of his own men. He was, er, part of the Union, i.e, the Yankee army, facing fifty-two thousand Confederate troops.

**Jack**

Oh . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

And they were just getting ready for the battle and there were snipers . . .

**Jack**

Was he saying [_makes taunting motion with fingers_] "Ea-sy"? 'Cause he had-

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Almost that equivalent. It was hubris. It was one of the most extraordinary last words ever spoken.

**Hiccup**

"It'll be . . . This'll be over in five minutes."

**Pitch**

"We'll be back in time for Deal Or No Deal?"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Erm . . . Let me tell you now that you could have played your elephant cards.

**Jack**

Oh. Well, I will then. [_reaches for his elephant cutout_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ahh!

**Jack**

Too late. [_replaces cutout beneath desk_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He actually said "Why are you dodging like this? They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-." And he was shot under the left eye, and fell down dead without finishing the word "distance".

**Jack**

Ooh! You'd be annoyed, wouldn't you?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You would.

**Jack**

You'd be livid! You'd be li- . . . Shiny eye? That's annoying to start with . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Hey.

**Jack**

. . . and you look a fool!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Exactly!

**Pitch**

Cheered up the troops, though, I'd imagine. I'd imagine they found that . . . they probably found that irony quite funny as that.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Troops will. They have that sort of sense of humour.

**Jack**

And I-

**Pitch**

They do, don't they?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Bless them.

**Pitch**

The lower . . . The lower orders, er, like that!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He was known as "Uncle John"; he was very popular. Ulysses S. Grant mourned his death; said it was worse than a loss of a division. He was the highest ranking Union officer of any kind to die in the war.

**Jack**

Do you think famous last words are accurate, 'cause I think they lie a lot of the time. It's always something incredibly witty, like, you know: "Dying? That's the last thing I shall do!" Whereas in fact, I imagine they said that about four days before they died, and the last thing they said was "Nurse!"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_laughs_]

**Jack**

"Nurse! It's happening again, I'm scared!"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You're probably right. No one got either their Elephant point. It may not be the only elephant bonus this . . . this game.

**Hiccup**

Let's hope not!

**Pitch**

I'd . . . I'd hate to think you'd . . . you'd spent your elephant bonus at the very start, erm . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, that's true. There are extra points if you can tell me . . . I mentioned Ulysses S. Grant, the great general of the Union army. What did the "S" stand for?

**Hiccup**

Sausage.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I'd so like to tell you that that was the answer!

**Hiccup**

Simon. Stevens. Stephanie.

**Pitch**

Steam-

**Jack**

Simone.

**Pitch**

Steamboat.

**Hiccup**

Spanky! Spanky Grant!

**Pitch**

Sugar . . . Sugartits.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

"Sugartits!"

**Pitch**

You can see . . . I mean the "S" works. "Sugartits" didn't work at all, er . . . "Follow me men!" "All right, Sugartits!" Er, and er . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Erm, no, actually, the "S" in Ulysses S. Grant stood for nothing at all.

**Hiccup**

Nothing at all.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

S was his . . . just his middle name.

Now, what use can you think of for a cat in a box at the end of a parachute?

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Jack.

**Jack**

It could serve as an example to other naughty cats. That would be . . . That would be my first thought on that!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's very good.

**Pitch**

It would be a hell of a way to finish off a children's party, wouldn't it? [_looks up excitedly_] "What's that? What's that? Oh! Oh no, it hasn't opened!" Er, and . . . The last one: [_miaows loudly and looks down as though something has hit the ground hard_]. Er . . .

**Mother Gothel**

So you pull your cord, nothing happens: [_gasps_]. You pull your safety cord: [_gasps_], nothing happens-[_mimes cradling and stroking a cat_]-you're allowed to take the cat out for your last few minutes-

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Aww!

**Mother Gothel**

-as a stress relieving boon to your dying minutes.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_chuckling_] It's a sweet idea!

**Viewscreens**

_: An animated cat in a parachute slowly descends into frame and proceeds to float around the sky._

**Mother Gothel**  
Oh!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, there it goes!

**Pitch**

Aww!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Bless!

**Pitch**

Sweet! Is there a part of the world that is in dire need of cats?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There was between 1959 and 1961, and it was the combined British and World Health Organisation.

**Jack**

[_gasps_] Oh!

**Hiccup**

Oh, some sort of mouse epidemic?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You're exactly on the right lines. In fact it wasn't mice but rats. Rats Frosty all kinds of diseases and as vermin need to be controlled, and the best way of controlling them in some circumstances . . .

**Jack**

. . . is to parachute in-

**Pitch**

The _best_ way is to parachute cats in a box?!

**Jack**

[_gestures to Pitch, sharing his incredulity_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It is, in . . .

**Pitch**

Why . . .

**Mother Gothel**

How do they get out of the box?

**Pitch**

Why don't you . . . Why don't you just drive up to the border with them and just fire them out of a cannon? 'Cause then their natural landing instinct would kick in! [_imitates an outstretched cat_] Putting little goggles on them to keep their hair back . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Mad as this seems, there is a kind of awful logic behind why they had to be parachuted. Why in the country would there be a sudden shortage of cats?

**Hiccup**

There's lots of dogs.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That would be one reason.

**Jack**

Had someone put catnip on the border? And they're all: [_paws manicly_].

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

We're in Borneo. Sarawak.

**Pitch**

Old women had swallowed flies . . . er, and . . .

**Jack**

I'm with Pitch on this one.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

The clue I'll give you . . .

**Mother Gothel**

Yep, yep.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane.

**Jack**

Ooh.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Now, what . . .

**Jack**

Cat flu.

**Hiccup**

DDT?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

DDT, well done. Now you're getting there.

**Hiccup**

Stuff to stop you having mozzy-bites?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes. It destroys mosquitos and it was sprayed in huge quantities over jungles in Sarawak and Borneo. And it killed all the mosquitos very successfully-

**Hiccup**

Killed . . . everything.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

-but it also killed a lot of cockroaches. The cockroaches ate the DDT and were eaten by cats, which killed the cats. But a lot of the cats were dead in places that you can spray from the air with DDT-in other words, places that you can't get a cat to in a little catmobile, for example-so they dropped them in in boxes that had special springs so that when they landed, the spring would open; the cat would bound out and help itself to any passing rat.

**Jack**

It would eat it?

**Pitch**

They would bound out? How showbiz is that?! They would go-[_mimes opening box_]-"Fwoing!"

**Pitch** and **Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

"Hello!"

**Jack**

In fact, the . . .

**Pitch**

And all the rats are gathered and go, "What's this? What's this? What's this? What's this? Oh, shit, it's a cat!" Er . . .

**Mother Gothel**

But the cat has been terrified. The cat has surely shat in the box on its way down. I mean, come on...

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You would think . . . You'd think it is a bit traumatising. If you've tried to take a cat in a basket to the vet, it's bad enough.

**Mother Gothel**

Exactly.

**Jack**

Is this . . . is this . . .

**Hiccup**

Oh, they love going in the basket.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Woof.

**Hiccup**

I had to take mine once to the vet and they . . . two of them, and they got out in the car, and I knew one had got out 'cause I could see it on the . . . on the back shelf, urinating. And the other one got on the dashboard in front of me and just went: [_outstretches arms as if claws and hisses ferociously_]. "Get back in the box!" [_hisses some more_]

**Mother Gothel**

"I'll parachute you into Borneo if you're not careful!"

**Hiccup**

On your arm . . . ! [_mimes driving while trying to shake a cat off his arm_]

**Mother Gothel**

"You wanna go to Borneo? No! Get in your box!"

**Hiccup**

[_mimes having a cat's claw in his face whilst trying to fend it off_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, Lord.

**Hiccup**

So, no, I can't imagine they'd take to it.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

No. So, there you have it. In 1959, the World Health Organisation parachuted cats in crates into Borneo to tackle a plague of rats, accidentally caused by their campaign against malaria.

What finally finished off the elderly in Great Yarmouth in 1960?

**Pitch**

[_holding up elephant cutout_] Please tell me . . .

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]

**Pitch**

. . . this is the time for . . .

**Jack**

What a world it would be.

**Pitch**

Oh, it'd be great. Like, once a year, just release an elephant into the streets of Great Yarmouth . . . and . . . and . . . and sellotape peanuts to the old, er . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

They would die of shock, wouldn't they?

**Pitch**

I . . . They'd . . . They'd die of compression, a lot of them. Er . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

They did die of shock.

**Pitch**

Oh, okay.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Or at least one . . . one person died of shock, firstly. It was two rather . . . sporty, shall we say, fellow members of the Haslemere Home For The Elderly in Great Yarmouth.

**Hiccup**

They saw a cat coming down at them by parachute.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

No. No, it was two who were responsible for the deaths. One was an 81-year-old woman who did a striptease, presumably in the lounge.

**Hiccup**

[_mimes having a heart attack, and slumps in his seat_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

And one of the . . . one of the old people had a heart attack. And five others had to have medical attention for shock.

**Pitch**

As a matter of interest, did any of them have a stroke? [_cheers_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Wey hey! Now . . . Now . . .

**Jack**

Isn't that . . .

**Pitch**

[_imitates a drummer playing rimshots_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, this Ms Gladys Elton, which was her name, Gladys . . . She was responsible for the death of one of her fellow . . . he wouldn't be alive now!

**Pitch**

Obviously-

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

This was 1960.

**Pitch**

Gladys is her real name. Her stripper name would be like Aurora, or something.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Possibly! Another inmate whose name was Harry Meadows-and he was 87-dressed up as Death, complete with scythe, and appeared at the window, and tapped on it, and beckoned!

**Pitch**

[_laughs, banging desk and applauding in appreciation_]

**Mother Gothel**

"Hello!"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

And, er . . .

**Mother Gothel**

"Come in!"

**Jack**

He did _what_?!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yep. And three further residents died as a result of seeing that!

**Jack**

Are you sure he _isn't_ Death and they just caught him?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Maybe Death is a man called Harry Meadows! But, er . . .

**Hiccup**

And they never had a fancy dress party again!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

The following year . . . And we are indebted to . . . to _Brewer's Book of Rogues, Villains And Eccentrics_ for this extraordinary information. The following year they closed the Haslemere Home For The Elderly down.

**Mother Gothel**

What did they do to Gladys Elton?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I would hope that they played "The Stripper" at her funeral, anyway, er, if nothing else.

So, God bless her. That was, er, Gladys Elton, er, and Harry Meadows. Now, what is pink, has pendulous breasts, gets sailors all excited, and tastes of prime beef?

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes.

**Jack**

Was Princess Margaret buried at sea?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Aww! Very good, excellent.

**Jack**

[_at groaning audience_] What?!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Any other thoughts?

**Mother Gothel**

I thought it might be Gladys Elton, but . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, Mother Gothel!

**Forfeit**

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "GLADYS ELTON".

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

We were there before you. Ohh.

**Mother Gothel**

[_throws arms up in the air_]

**Hiccup**

A walrus.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, you're in the right area.

**Pitch**

A manatee?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, manatee is closer. Steller's Sea Cow, which is the, er-

**Mother Gothel**

Steller?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

-the name of this particular species of Sirenia . . . of . . . of dugong manatee-like thing. Erm, sea . . .

**Viewscreens**

: A clay model of a dugong.

**Mother Gothel**  
Ooh!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh. Oh, look at that.

**Hiccup**

Oh, isn't it beautiful.

**Jack**

You . . . You can see why sailors in days of yore thought they were mermaids. How long would have to be at sea before you spotted that and went, "Oh, yeah, I'd do it, yeah. Another one!"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That's actually a model, because it's one of those sad stories-

**Pitch**

Oh, they have models as well? That's a particularly _good_-looking one?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That's-

**Jack**

Yeah, she is a looker, matey!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That's a size-zero dugong! Erm . . . Well, why would we not have a photograph of it? Why would we only have this model?

**Pitch**

Because they're extinct?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Because they're ext-

**Jack**

Very camera-shy.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I'm afraid what happened was this man Steller described it as being pink, having pendulous breasts... and tasting delicious. 7,000 pounds' worth of meat you get off one of those. So people came from far and wide to Bering Island where he'd discovered them and, er . . .

**Hiccup**

Ate the lot.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

And the last one was twenty-six years after he discovered it, so he has the distinction of being the first and last scientist to describe the animal, so it was very-

**Jack**

If he hadn't described it as "tasty" . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

That was his big mistake.

**Jack**

Mm-mm!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He should've said it was disgusting, shouldn't he?

Now, what's the story, lady and gentleman, of the Emperor's New Thrones?

**Hiccup**

[_exhales, taken aback_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

So many!

**Hiccup**

When you're on the spot, you go . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yeah, I know!

**Hiccup**

. . . you go right out of your mind! I just keep . . . All I can think of is a penguin! I've got the penguin on the chair and I know it's not right!

**Jack**

Ming. The Merciless.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ming the Merciless!

**Jack**

Who I'm pretty sure was an emperor.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He was.

**Hiccup**

Was Jabba The Hutt an emperor?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Let's stay on Earth, can we? Just, please! Er, all right, so it was . . .

**Hiccup**

Was he, though?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's not . . . It's not Europe. Not Europe, Europe-[_makes dismissive noise_].

**Hiccup**

Not Europe. [_starts listing on his fingers_] Africa, Asia . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Africa.

**Hiccup**

Africa.

**Pitch**

Ethiopia?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ethiopia is the right answer.

**Hiccup**

Ethiopia.

**Pitch**

Yeah, it was, er . . .

**Hiccup**

Haile Selassie.

**Pitch**

Haile Selassie.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Haile Selassie. Now, before Haile Selassie, there was an Emperor . . . ?

**Jack**

Lowle Selassie.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, very good. No, Emperor Menelik.

**Hiccup**

Oh, okay.

Viewscreens

: Three photos of Emperor Menelik.

**Jack**  
Now . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Possibly "Men-lick".

**Jack**

Is that him?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes, that's Menelik.

**Jack**

Wow.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Fine looking gentleman. He lived from 1844 to 1913, but 'round about the 1890s, he was showing some people around Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia/Abyssinia as it was known, and, er . . .

**Jack**

What, he was emperor and tour guide?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes, he seems to have been. These are rather august visitors. And they noticed men dead, hanging from trees. And they said, "Look, come on, have you not heard of this wonderful new invention, the electric chair? It's humane, it's quick." And he said, "I shall order two of them." There was one tiny drawback.

**Pitch**

There's no electricity.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There was no electricity supply at all. In the entire country.

**Hiccup**

So they had to pedal really fast. [_pedals vigorously in his seat_]

**Jack**

Did they execute people using only static?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Rub a comb against their pullover!

**Jack**

It's for quite . . . for quite petty thefts: "Ooh! Aah!"

**Mother Gothel**

Yeah, yeah!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Is it me getting older that I can't get out of a car or go to a lift or touch a tap in a hotel room without getting an electric shock?

**Mother Gothel**

No, it means you're very passionate.

**Pitch**

It'd be great if it was, as you get older, you become more metallic. Er, you just . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I don't know . . . !

**Pitch**

Your bones turn to mercury or something and you just . . . like an X-Men thing, you finally get your superpower, er, just before you die.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_as Ian McKellen_] "Maybe I'm turning into Ian McKellen which I've long wanted to do!" Er, but er . . . it's . . . it's . . .

**Mother Gothel**

But some people say it's because of passion, like when you meet, you know, your . . . the man, the woman of your dreams, you have an electric shock.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Like Van de Graaff generators.

**Jack**

Sometimes if I meet an attractive woman, I _will_ Taser her.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, there we are, you see, so . . . But you still haven't quite answered the question yet.

**Jack**

There was . . .

**Hiccup**

He used them as thrones.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He used . . . He used, one of them anyway, as a throne.

**Jack**

Did he stop being emperor when electricity finally came to Addis Ababa?

**Pitch**

And when they eventually brought it, did they go . . . they go, "Big news! Hope you're sitting down. No, wrong thing to say . . . er . . . "

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

1896 they got electric power in . . . in Ethiopia.

**Viewscreens**

: A map of an (as yet) unidentified Island.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
Now, in 1916, the fourth British Antarctic Expedition was stranded on -[_gestures to viewscreens_]-_this_ island for over four months. What's it called?

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes?

**Jack**

Guernsey. There'd been a terrible mix-up . . .

**Pitch**

Yeah.

**Jack**

. . . and that is Guernsey.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Which is quite a long way south, isn't it, Guernsey? But is it as far south as this island?

**Jack**

You saying that's wrong, then?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's not Guernsey, no, but a lovely effort. Yup.

**Hiccup**

Is this the famous one where they got stranded for ages and one of them had to go walking for about eight months and go back again?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Shackleton went all the way, yes.

**Hiccup**

Shackleton, that's it.

**Jack**

Oh, is it the Island Of Reluctant But Inevitable Homosexuality? I think it's that one; I think I recognise it! From a school trip that went _horribly _wrong!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Lord of the Undone Flies! Erm . . . It's, erm . . .

**Hiccup**

[_holds up elephant cutout_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh! Hullo!

**Hiccup**

Is it . . . Is it called Elephant Island?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes, it is!

**Viewscreens**

: The Elephant in the Room card displays and trumpets.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Marvellous, Hiccup! Very good! Well done!

**Hiccup**

There's an elephant in the room!

**Mother Gothel**

[_pecks at Hiccup's head with her elephant cutout_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There is! You said it: there is an elephant in the room, quite right. Partly because of its shape: That's sort of, supposedly, I think, a trunk, isn't it? You can see an elephant there if you were to draw the top left as its ear, down there...

**Hiccup**

No, you can't.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, vaguely . . .

**Mother Gothel**

Nope. Nope. Nope.

**Hiccup**

No, you can't.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It was Shackleton's lot who got stuck there and Shackleton went off all the way to South Georgia to a whaling station and he came all the way back. It was an extraordinarily adventurous business-

**Viewscreens**

: Photo of the British Antarctic Expedition waving at the sky.

**Mother Gothel**  
That lot.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

-and there they're all waving. That's them. They're an extraordinary bunch: very brave, very hardy, very foolish in many ways, these people.

**Jack**

[_wistfully_]  
Very much like us.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes. I'd like to think that. Erm . . . Elephant Island, named partly for its shape, as I was saying, and partly for the fact that there were a lot of elephant seals on it. There you are. Er, the men called it "'Ell Of An Island".

**Hiccup**

Eh? You see what they did there?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You can't blame them for descending to humour in that situation.

**Mother Gothel**

Aww.

**Hiccup**

Quite a few less elephant seals after they'd been there.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I'd imagine there were, er, many _fewer_ elephant seals. Yes, so, erm . . .

**Hiccup**

[_mouths_] Thank you. [_rolls eyes_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

"Oh, please. Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi, really!"

Erm, Elephant Island: our second Elephant in the Room this week. What quite interesting object is at the very end of the Earth?

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]  
Telford Town Centre.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Hey! Very good.

**Jack**

Although I would argue about the "interesting" bit.

**Pitch**

Is it the bottom of Patagonia?

**Viewscreens:**

Animation of the Earth rotating**.**

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's right down there, yes. It's the southern pole of inaccessibility.

**Jack**

Oh! Is it the "off" switch?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

To stop it spinning?

**Hiccup**

Plughole.

**Jack**

Yeah.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's . . . It's . . . It's most unusual. It's a bust.

**Jack** and** Pitch**

There's a bust?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There's a bust.

**Jack**

Oh. Worth going then.

**Pitch**

Yeah . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

In the sense, not of a pair of breasts, but in the sense of a sort of head and shoulders and front bit of a human being.

**Pitch**

No, no, we didn't really think there's a big pair of tits.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

He's a . . . He's a living twentieth century person. Now dead.

**Mother Gothel**

A man.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yeah.

**Hiccup**

Stalin.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, the one before.

**Hiccup**

Lenin.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Vladamir Ilyich Lenin is there, right in the middle.

**Mother Gothel**

My word.

**Viewscreens**

: Photo of the bust of Lenin at the southern pole of inaccessibility.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
It's just bizarre. This southern pole of inaccessibility is more remote and hard to reach than the geographical South Pole, and in this very year, the destination was reached by a team of four Britons called Team N2i: Rory Sweet, Rupert Longsdon, Henry Cookson and Paul Landry.

**Viewscreens**: Photo of the N2i expedition posing next to the bust of Lenin.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
And we have one of this expedition _in the audience_!

_The panel gasps and oohs in delight._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Mr . . .

**Jack**

Is it Lenin?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
No! Mr Rupert Longsdon is here.

_Shot of audience, amidst which sits Rupert Longsdon, who waves._

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**  
There he is, ladies and gentlemen!

**Audience in General**

[_applauds_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Isn't that bizarre? Phenomenal.

Rupert, how far did you actually have to travel? 'Cause this was all . . . No . . . No mechanical power, was it?

**Longsdon**  
Er, no mechanical power. We travelled, er, eleven-hundred miles in total. Some of it was cross-country skiing and then kite skiing.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Was it cold?

**Longsdon**  
Er . . . When that picture was taken, I think it was minus-60 degrees celsius.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh! What did you eat?

**Longsdon**  
Er, food-

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, food.

**Longsdon**  
-was-

**Pitch**

[_nodding sarcastically_]  
Oh, right. Yeah.

**Longsdon**  
-fairly . . . fairly repetitive. It was chocolate, cheese, salami, pasta-lots of it-erm, and one day towards the end when we'd been eating the same thing for about forty days, we played Laxative Roulette.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_gasps_]

**Longsdon**  
And one person who had laxatives in their food; we didn't know who, and . . .

**Jack**

I bet you did!

**Longsdon**  
Not straight away. The consequences were quite obvious after a while.

**Hiccup**

Does it freeze as it comes out?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ohh!

**Hiccup**

A shard of shit!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

D'oh!

[_gesturing to picture of the bust of Lenin on viewscreens_] When did the Russians put that there?

**Longsdon**  
1958.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_gasps_] Good lord. Rupert Longsdon, (A), congratulations on doing an extraordinary first and being very, very foolhardy and very brave and very brilliant.

**Pitch**

Well, clearly not an extraordinary first: there was a statue there when they arrived!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

They went under their own power. No one had ever done that before. Congratulations. Thank you very much, Rupert. Thank you. That's amazing.

**Jack**

I like the idea of that, though. The idea of going . . . going and doing that un- . . . with no mechanical device whatsoever.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yeah.

**Jack**

His moon mission's going to be amazing.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It will be impressive.

**Jack**

It'll be a man up a ladder, going-[_mimes climbing purposefully up a ladder_]-"Ooh, this is . . . This is madness!"

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

So, ladies and gentlemen, on that splendid note, the pale rider now herds us reluctantly towards the slough of despond that is General Ignorance, so fingers on your buzzers. What does your appendix do?

**Mother Gothel**

[_presses buzzer, which plays a country and western dance_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh. Mother Gothel.

**Mother Gothel**

Like the Great British builder, it grumbles but it does absolutely nothing!

**Forfeit**

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "NOTHING".

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, Gothel, Gothel, Gothel, Gothel, Gothel!

**Mother Gothel**

[_cowers beneath her arms and feels heart in relief_]

**Jack**

[_presses buzzer, which guillotines_]  
Does it contain details about me that aren't needed in the main body?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Brilliant! Very good! Well, one of the uses it has is for rebuilding organs around the body in surgery, but it has quite recently been discovered to have a role in the immune system, building things: antibodies and, er, lymphoids and so on. So it is, apparently-I am rather worried now that I've discovered this-it seems to have plenty of uses and I'm thinking of asking for mine back. It's got . . .

**Jack**

Oh . . .

**Viewscreens**: Image of the main organs in a silhouetted body, with the appendix circled in white.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There it is.

**Jack**

I-

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There it is. The little thing there.

**Mother Gothel**

Is it big? Is it . . . I can't see the scale of it.

**Pitch**

I think it's only small.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

No, it's a wee little wormy thing, yeah.

**Jack**

Well, maybe yours is. [_cockily holds his hands about a foot apart_] Showing off about the size of my appendix! [_mimes smoking a cigar_] That I don't even have anymore, ladies.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Well, the largest one ever found belonged to a Pakistani gentleman and was actually 9.2 inches, which is very big.

**Jack**

[_snorts_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Not impressed?

**Jack**

Nah, I'm not impressed.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

What's the best thing to do, though, when you get the four minute warning?

**Mother Gothel**

[_presses buzzer, which plays a country and western dance_]  
Pop a Love Egg up; you're guaranteed to come before the end does.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Very good.

**Jack**

And you've always got one on your person?

**Mother Gothel**

Always. At all times.

**Jack**

And . . . What I would do if . . . Four minute warning, I would . . . get . . . Stand next to a wall, and then strike a pose. Do some- . . . [_strikes classical "Egyptian" pose_] I would do something like that so that when I get blown into my own shadow and obliterated by the blast . . . what . . .

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It would be a funny and a . . . Stylish.

**Jack**

Yeah, when they do _Time Team_ in four thousand years . . .

**Hiccup**

You'd go like that: [_holds his arms out to the sides_]

**Jack**

And... and the new... Well no, I want the new Tony Robinson to uncover me and go "I think Ancient Egyptians lived here."

**Hiccup**

Oh, no, better than that, you should get a really long pole and put it between your legs!

**Jack**

Great!

**Hiccup**

[_holds his arms up and away from his body_] And they'd go "My God, look at this one!" Make sure you got your name somewhere on the . . . Write your name on the wall.

**Jack**

You could . . . You could sort of, just flick out your posterior there, you could just sort of bend your bum out, and sort of . . . try and make it look as if you'd farted and everything had gone.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, please! Oh!

What is the four minute warning? What . . . What am I referring to?

**Hiccup**

It's a nuclear attack.

**Jack**

There never was a four minute warning, was there?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ah. There wasn't really such a thing as a four minute warning. What happened was the . . . the Americans got permission from the British to build an early warning system at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire and there was quite a lot of fuss, saying, "Well, the Americans are ruining our lovely nation park just so they can get this 15 minute warning, and what good do we get out of it in Britain?" And the Defence ministry said, "Oh, well it's also useful for us, because we get a . . . a . . . a warning that in four minutes, _we'll_ go." So . . . Which everybody rightly ridiculed: "What the hell use is a four minute warning? I mean, you've got barely time to do anything." [_to Mother Gothel_] Except your love egg going off, obviously. Erm . . .

Finally, the last, end question: How many poles are there at the ends of the Earth?

**Hiccup**

Oh, now, obviously, now, this is clearly . . .

**Jack**

Well, that's . . . that's a dangerous . . .

**Mother Gothel **and** Jack**

[_make suspicious ooh-ing sounds_]

**Hiccup**

I think there . . . Maybe there are four. There's a . . . There's the top of the Earth and then there's the magnetic one. Is that . . . Is that what you're getting at?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_tentatively_] Yes it is, I'm getting at how many North Poles and South Poles are there in-

**Hiccup**

Two of each.

**Jack**

Two of each.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

So you're saying four?

**Forfeit**

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "FOUR".

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, Hiccup!

**Hiccup**

I really, really tried hard!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You did try hard! You've got to use that, but take it further.

**Hiccup**

Eight.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Ohh! [_buries head in hands_]

**Forfeit**

: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "EIGHT".

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Have another go!

**Hiccup**

Oh no, I've blown all my Elephant points now!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

You have!

**Hiccup**

Sixteen!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

It's eleven. I know it sounds bizarre, but I'll try and take you through them. There are the two geographic poles as they're known: North and South geographic poles. That's where the Earth's axis of rotation meets the surface as it were-[_attempts to illustrate by clasping his left index finger with his right hand and making twisting motion_]. So that's, you know, pretty obvious. You'd think. There are...

**Jack**

[_bemusedly imitates Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi's gesture_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

[_holds out clasped hand_] There's the Earth, and that's spinning round, you know. [_twists his hand around his index finger again_]

**Pitch**

Come on!

**Mother Gothel**

[_imitates Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi's gesture_]

**Jack**

[_pulls index finger fluidly out of clasped hand_] I'm just saying . . .

**Mother Gothel**

[_pulls her finger out and gazes at it thoughtfully_]

**Jack**

I'm not sure that's the best mime you could've done!

**Pitch** and **Mother Gothel**

[_point their index fingers towards each other_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

All right! Don't . . .

**Mother Gothel**

[_points index fingers together, then outlines a long cylindrical shape_]

**Jack**

"Where the . . . the . . . the geographical pole where this happens!" [_repeats the mime_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

I was trying to be like-[_performs the mime once again_]-it's going 'round the . . .

**Jack**

[_points at Rupert Longsdon_] Is that . . . is that what happens when you get there, sir, is it?

**Pitch**

[_makes fisting motion_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Oh, well, Lord. Okay. With . . . There are the two geographic poles.

**Jack**

Yes.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There's the geomagnetic poles-

**Jack**

What's the mime for that?

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

-where the Earth's magnetic dipole meets the surface.

**Jack**

Obviously!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yeah. There are magnetic poles where the geomagnetic field lines point vertically into the ground in that way that . . . [_makes repeated downward pointing motion_] . . . electrical fields . . . magnetic fields do.

**Mother Gothel**

[_presses buzzer, which plays a country and western dance_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochiB**

Yes?

**Mother Gothel**

I want to go home now.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

All right! We'll carry . . . we're gonna get through these. Girls never like the physics, it's odd!

**Mother Gothel**

[_sighs_] Please, I feel sick, sir!

**Pitch**

[_presses buzzer, which chimes_]  
[_pointing in Rupert Longsdon's direction_] Even Polar Guy, about . . . who's kind of into this as a topic...

**Mother Gothel**

Yeah, yep.

**Pitch**

...has dozed off at this stage!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

There we are. There are eleven poles: two geographic north and south poles, two magnetic poles, two geomagnetic poles, two poles of inaccessibility, two celestial poles and one ceremonial south pole. Ah! And now we have come . . . we have come . . .

**Mother Gothel**

We've come! We've come!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes!

**Jack**

As you would!

**Mother Gothel**

Your pole of inaccessibility has finally been plundered!

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

Yes! Oh, dear! We've come, not to the beginning of the end nor indeed the end of the beginning nor even the beginning of the middle part of that bit before the end but to the actual end of the Endings show itself, and we have a tie for first place between Pitch and Jack at 5 points!

**Jack**

[_shaking Pitch's hand_]  
Hands across the nation, now. Well done.

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

And extraordinarily, tied at last place at minus-17 each: Mother Gothel and Hiccup!

**Mother Gothel**

[_raises arms triumphantly_]

**Hiccup**

[_politely claps Mother Gothel_]

**Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi**

So as the killer locusts of Abadon swarm around us and the end of the show draws nigh, it's good night from Jack, Pitch, Mother Gothel, Hiccup, and me, and I'll follow the advice of the King Of Hearts, which he gave to the white rabbit: "Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on 'til you come to the end and then stop." Good night.


	4. Chapter 4: Domesticity

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Good evening. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI, the home . . . the home from home of the discerning couch potato. Plumping my cushions tonight are Stoick T. Vast . . . Merida DunBroch . . . Toothiana . . . and TV's mop-top, Hiccup Haddock.  
Now, tonight's edition is all about domesticity: dry-cleaning, dishwashers, dust-busters, dirt-devils, detergent, door hinges and the like, and we have familiar domestic noises to match. Merida goes:

Merida  
[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a vacuum cleaner]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Stoick goes:

Stoick  
[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a blender]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Tooth goes:

Tooth  
[presses buzzer, which makes a hairdryer sound] [softly] What is it? [in realisation] A hairdryer.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, I know that. That's a Pifco Trismatic 17.

Tooth  
Yep.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
And Hiccup goes:

Hiccup  
[presses buzzer, which plays the "Match Of The Day" theme]

Tooth  
[laughs] Hooray!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, good. So all genders are comfortably assigned their tasks.  
Tell me something interesting now about dry cleaning.

Hiccup  
They put your clothes on a radiator and then they fold them.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, now, that's interesting, because you're saying dry cleaning is therefore well named?

Hiccup  
Yeah. Well, there's steam. Is there steam involved?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not steam, no. But it's a wet clean. It's just not water.

Hiccup  
Some sort of chemicals.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's a chemical solvent. A perchloroephylene, known as "perc".

Merida  
Dry cleaning's actually something spies do, isn't it? The sort of procedures they go through to try and find out whether they're being followed or not.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, give the young lady-girl some points! Absolutely right, yes.

Merida  
[whispering to Tooth] I got points!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
They do sudden u-turns when they're driving and they dip into shops and go out the back exits and so on.

Merida  
Check whether an umbrella's just about to go up their arse.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That kind of thing. Exactly. And they call it "dry cleaning" for some reason.  
So while we're on the subject of dry cleaning materials, er, what use did Ray Davis have for one hundred thousand gallons of dry cleaning fluid in 1964?

Merida  
[presses buzzer, which vacuums] Had The Kinks ran out of crack?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not that, I don't think.

Viewscreens: Two pictures of The Kinks' lead singer Ray Davies.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I don't think crack had been invented in 1964, but there is Ray.

Hiccup  
Did he have a dry cleaning shop?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
We put up a picture of Ray Davies because you mentioned The Kinks, but this particular Ray Davis was a physicist, and he wanted to find out how many neutrinos were being beamed out of the sun, and so he had this huge pit dug in Leadville.

Viewscreens: Two pictures of Ray Davis the physicist.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
There he is.

Stoick  
[with faux-realisation] Oh! Ray Davis!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah! You see?

Stoick  
Ohh, right. Whoof.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
He's rather daringly known as Ray Davis Junior, actually, but . . . And he had all this done, fifty-thousand feet, nearly, underground, because neutrinos are weird things that go through everything. There are millions literally going through your body now, all the time. They have no mass. They'll go through light-years' thickness of lead just like that, without leaving a trace.

Stoick  
So this Mr Davis here, as we have a panel of ladies tonight for a change, Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi, erm: Hot or not?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
[to Merida and Tooth] What do you reckon? Would you?

Tooth  
I think he is hot.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah?

Tooth  
Waiting under the sun to catch neutrinos.

Merida  
Er, yeah, and after a few pints of dry cleaning fluid I'd go with him.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Would you have a crack at him? Would you?

Merida  
I'd wave my crack at him.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Wave your crack at him. Can you do that with cracks? I don't think you can, can you?

Merida  
You can if you've got a specially designed trolley.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, the reason he had this dry cleaning fluid is there's lots of chlorine in perchloroethylene, and one neutrino will change it to one atom of argon-

Stoick  
[leans towards Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi with pained expression]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
-and so you can know how many neutrinos have hit it, and then you know how much neutrino activity is coming from the sun.

Stoick  
Is this . . . Every time you talk like this, can a physicist do a shot? Is this some kind of bizarre physics drinking game?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, it is . . . No, it's at the very basis of all our understanding of the universe is to try and understand the neutrino . . .

Tooth  
So what happens to the . . . When the . . . When the . . . So is . . . It . . . [buries head in hands in defeat].

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
[chuckling] I know!

Tooth  
Just run it by me again, just . . . I'm really . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
[making hurtling motion with hand] You've got neutrinos-

Tooth  
Yeah . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
-streaming, solar neutrinos streaming from the sun . . .

Tooth  
Right, solar neutrinos . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Billions and billions and billions a second.

Tooth  
But if neutrinos are everywhere, how do you distinguish between solar neutrinos and any other neutrinos? I'm sorry, I just . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
You know, you're so right. They are essentially invented to make the mathematics of modern physics work.

Tooth  
Right.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Some people believe they really are the secrets of the entire universe.

Stoick  
I am finding this absolutely fascinating, but if we could have the picture of Ray up again, I think the most extraordinary thing: a bloke in Marigolds. I think that . . .

Hiccup  
He's only got yellow because probably Mrs Davis got them. "I got your new work gloves, Ray! Are the neutrinos going through me now?" [disgruntled] "Yes, dear." [raises arms in the air] "I can never feel 'em!"

Tooth  
What did he do with all the dry cleaning fluid afterwards? Did he . . . Did he then open a dry cleaning shop?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's a very good point because it's . . . it's hazardous waste.

Hiccup  
Chuck it in a river.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Probably!

Tooth  
[dismissively] Yeah! Just get rid of it!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's . . . it's deep down in the ground. It's probably still there in Leadville. Leadville, South Dakota rather than Leadville, Colorado, I believe.

Hiccup  
Oh, he's American, is he?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Ah, yeah, you see.

Hiccup  
He doesn't look American.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I know what you mean. He looks sort of like Stanley Unwin.

Hiccup  
He looks like he's in a shed in Gloucestershire.

Stoick  
He's not a [boisterous American accent] "Howdy!", is he? He's a [nasal British accent] "Hello! I'm Ray!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
But he has one thing that he is . . . in the Guinness Book of Records . . .

Stoick  
The biggest penis in physics!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, dear. No. He was the oldest ever winner of the Nobel Prize.

Stoick  
Really?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
88 years old, he won the Nobel Prize.

Hiccup  
I think he is related to me, actually.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Aha, you see, you cherry.

Hiccup  
Yeah, the Nobel Prize winner, I've heard of him at Christmas. "Your cousin Ray won a Nobel Prize. Are you busy? Of course you're not."

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
A little more domestic science now, I think. What was the propulsion system used for the very first vaccuum cleaner?

Stoick  
[presses buzzer, which whisks]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh! My dear Stoick.

Stoick  
Mr Kingdom Brunel, I believe, er, fashioned a ninety-five tonne steam-powered hoover . . . that sucked his entire house into it, erm . . . which is why, when you see those photos of him by the big chains, he looks so grumpy. 'Cause he has to get the bag every night to go to bed.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well . . . [breaks off laughing]. Where do you think- I'll turn to the girls because you'll know far more about vaccuum cleaners. Aah! [slaps his face reprimandingly] I'm joking, of course, it's post-ironic something or other. Erm . . . Which country do you think first saw it?

Merida  
I think it was in England-

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It was! Correct.

Merida  
-and I . . . I think it was, erm, like a couple of really energetic hamsters sort of running round on a wheel.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well . . .

Merida  
Someone thrashed them.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
They were horse drawn. The horses weren't actually powering the vacuum.

Merida  
Horse drawn hoover?!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
The first one was a horse drawn hoover. Why would that be, would you imagine?

Tooth  
Is it farming related?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not farming related. It was simply that they were so vast. They wouldn't sell an individual one to a house. It was a cleaning service done from the street. Obviously, the hoses went in through the window, and the clever thing was he had transparent tubes, so everybody would gather around and watch the dust being sucked in and go-[clapping politely]-"ooh" and "aah" and "hoorah!"

Merida  
Do you do hoovering?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Do you hoover?

Merida  
[pointing at Hiccup and Stoick respectively] Do you hoover, do you hoover?

Stoick  
No.

Hiccup  
Brenda vacuums in my house.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Brenda.

Hiccup  
Mmm.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
She . . . She's your . . .

Hiccup  
Whilst listening to the soundtrack of "Mamma Mia" on an iPod.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Wearing nothing but frilly panties?

Hiccup  
She's fifty-nine!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh.  
I have a quotation for you here, specifically for you Merida.

Merida  
Oh! Just for . . . [makes flattered gesture].

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
How do you know when it's time to wash the dishes and clean your house?

Merida  
Oh, because bubonic plague has broken out?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
This is a quotation from a dictionary of comic quotations and the author of the quotation is one Merida Dunbroch.

Merida  
Oh, that one! She's crap!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
The answer is, "Look inside your pants. If you find a penis in there, it's not time." There you are!

Merida  
I think that's my grandmother, Mrs Merida Dunbroch. She's always saying things like that.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Anyway, there's your vacuuming. Hubert Cecil Booth. 1903, he invented it. [slight Gloucestershire accent] He was from Gloucestershire.  
But from housework, I think, to homework. Complete the following sentence using the appropriate adverb. [to Hiccup] That's the word that usually ends in "l-y".

Hiccup  
Oh, right.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
So, er, the first practical dishwasher was invented to wash dishes more . . .

Hiccup  
Quickly!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Quickly? Oh dear, no!

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "QUICKLY".

Hiccup  
Thoroughly.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Nor thoroughly.

Hiccup  
Cleanly!

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "CLEANLY".

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, dearie me! You're piling them up now! You're doing well on the adverbs . . .

Hiccup  
Yes, I've used several adverbs.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
. . . but it's neither quickly or cleanly.

Merida  
More . . . often than women can be arsed to.

Hiccup  
Daily!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not . . .

Hiccup  
See what I did there?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not more daily, no.

Stoick  
More steamily!

Tooth  
Soundly.

Hiccup  
Slowly.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not more slowly, but . . .

Hiccup  
Fastly!

Tooth  
Safely!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Safely is the right answer!

Merida  
Well done!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well done, Tooth. Excellent.

Hiccup  
[makes "I should've known that" gesture]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah. The inventer was an American woman, and she was very rich,

so she didn't need to wash her dishes herself, so it wasn't done as a labour . . .

Hiccup  
Mrs Hotpoint.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not Mrs . . . Her name was Cochrane, erm . . .

Viewscreens: Two pictures of a middle-aged Josephine Cochrane, writing at a desk.

Stoick  
[sitting up] Whoa, mama!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Merida . . . [breaks off laughing].

Hiccup  
Ah, you thought Raymond Davis was foxy!

Stoick  
Yeah!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
She was from a quite grand family. Her great great grandfather John "Crazy" Fitch invented the steamboat. 'Cause he said [southern

American accent] "I'm gonna get this boat. It's gonna have steam driving the wheels, and-"

Hiccup  
[high-pitched redneck accent] "You cra-zay, John! You cra-zay!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It just sort of stuck.

Hiccup  
[southern American accent] "Just watch me!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah. But she had seventeenth-century porcelain, of which she was very fond, and her servants were forever chipping it as they washed up, and one night she actually dismissed them for the evening, and said, [American accent] "I'm gonna wash up and show you how it can be done without chipping," and she found she was chipping things. So she said, "I need to invent a machine that will wash without chipping", so the idea of the racks to put them all in separately so they never knock against each other . . . and it was a huge success and when her husband died in 1883 leaving her virtually penniless, she actually needed it. She built a small one and a big one, and a big one could do two-hundred dishes in two minutes. And dry them.  
It cost $250, which was a huge amount then. We're talking about the 1880s. It was really hotels and big institutions that bought them, but it won first prize at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.

Viewscreens: Two pictures of Glen C Sheffer's poster for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

Hiccup  
Is that her there?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That's the wonderful World's Fair of Chicago, which was a great event in its own. They had the world's first Ferris Wheel, designed by George . . . ?

Merida  
Clooney.

Stoick  
. . . and Mildred!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
First fair to . . .

Hiccup  
George Ferris!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes!

Tooth  
Ferris!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well done, you see, you've made up for a little bit of embarrassment early on. But there we are.  
In the words of Erma Bombeck, "Housework can be fatal if you do it right". In Britain, the odds of being killed in an accident in your home are the same as those of being killed in a car crash. In 2003, a woman in Scotland was killed in a freak dishwasher accident.

Merida  
What happened?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
She slipped on the floor and fell onto a knife sticking out of the cutlery basket.

Tooth  
That's right.

Hiccup  
Surely you put the knife in-

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I've cut my palm doing that.

Hiccup  
-point down, don't you?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, sometimes you get a better clean on the blade if it's . . . if it's blade up.

Hiccup  
[in disbelief] Oh . . .

Stoick  
I clean my knives in a crossbow! Erm . . . Some people say it's foolish. I put them in the hoover and set it on "blow" and then just shoot water at them around the kitchen as I sit with a plug, bare-wired, at my feet, peeing on it! To give it a better clean!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
What was the second commonest cause of death for women up to the year 1800?

Stoick  
[presses buzzer, which whisks]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes.

Stoick  
Er, kestrels.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Bit of a wild stab in the dark.

Hiccup  
Childbirth.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Childbirth was number one.

Stoick  
Ooh, right.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Very good that you . . .

Merida  
Was there . . .

Stoick  
[presses buzzer, which whisks] Was kestrels number two?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
No! It was number two was the one I was asking for and I took that to be your answer the first time round.

Stoick  
Oh, sorry . . .

Merida  
Was it dehydration from having to lick the carpet clean 'cause hoovers hadn't been invented?

Stoick  
Was . . . Was . . . Were these . . . Were these deaths at night? 'Cause I could go with owls. [curves lip]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Let me say it's no kind of bird of prey.

Stoick  
Not even a swan?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Not even . . . No.

Stoick  
Swans flying at women really hard, with stiff necks, 'til they went through their bodies like a javelin!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
No. It's a nice image . . .

Stoick  
Women lying all over the British countryside with swans . . . [slumps back as if skewered]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I know . . . no. No.

Tooth  
Was it horse-riding accidents?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
No, that's, if I may say so a great deal more intelligent, and I don't mean that in a patronising way!

Hiccup  
Beaten to a pulp by their husbands.

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "DOMESTIC VIOLENCE".

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, hello! No, domestic violence is not it. It was domestic, though.

Hiccup  
Beaten to a pulp by their sons!

Tooth  
Oh was it . . . was it . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That would still be domestic violence.

Hiccup  
Falling down the stairs?

Merida  
Was it being ducked as a witch and drowning?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
No. It was in trying to do something. It was engaged in a domestic activity.

Hiccup  
Cooking.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Cooking is the right answer, yes!

Hiccup  
Death by cooking?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah, largely because their dresses would catch fire. Don't know why that's funny, but it is.

Hiccup  
Ah! The second most common cause of death?!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
After childbirth, amongst . . .

Hiccup  
"What happened to yours?" "Oh, set light to herself in the kitchen."

Merida  
I bet a lot of their husbands came in and went "Blimey, that's a big roasty you've prepared today!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, a quick scoot 'round now some handy household hints that I want you to help me with. Merida, what's a good way to create the impression that you've cleaned the house when you haven't?

Merida  
Just lock the door and kill everyone.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
This is to create that awful word: "freshness".

Tooth  
Open the window?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It . . . Well, you'd think, frankly . . .

Merida  
Drink some lavender water and have a piss?

Stoick  
Every time you get a minicab home, nick the little tree off of its mirror.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I'm no fan of this tip and it only works in the autumn and winter months. You spray or apply furniture polish to a radiator and it fills the room with the smell of furniture polish. These hints are either from a book called Trade Secrets by Katherine Lapworth and Alexandra Fraser, or from Superhints by the Lady-

Merida  
I know those two.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Do you know-

Merida  
They're slags, the pair of them.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
What do you know . . . There's a book called Superhints by the Lady Wardington.

Merida  
Yeah, I know her.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Do you know the Lady Wardington?

Merida  
She's a bitch.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Is she?

Merida  
So, you know, let's get on to more practical publications.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
All right. Okay, Tooth, we'll try this one. How would you treat silk like spaghetti and vice-versa?

Merida  
What-

Tooth  
Store it in a jar, or-

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's . . .

Tooth  
-cook it with bolognese?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
There's something you can do to each of them.

Hiccup  
Throw it against the wall; see if it sticks.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Ah! But what sort of wall?

Hiccup  
Kitchen.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
A kitchen wall.

Hiccup  
I take it round the house to find a wall. "Can I come in?" [knocks on desk] "Mind if I come in?" [mimes throwing a spaghetti strand] "Your dinner's ready!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
And where would we get silk? Why would you throw silk against a wall?

Stoick  
Well, in passion, you know, the . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Having a passionate fit, yes!  
You'd throw silk against a brick wall. It would stick if it were . . .

Tooth  
If it was silk.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
If it were silk, exactly.

Hiccup  
Oh, very good.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's a test to see if it's not polyester or crimpling or something.

Hiccup  
It's ruined then, once you peel it off again.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well it doesn't stick like spaghetti. It just catches, and you just pull it off.

Hiccup  
Took the paint off my kitchen wall with spaghetti.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes, but the silk wouldn't take anything off your brick wall, that's all vice-versa.

Hiccup  
Well, nonetheless, Brenda wouldn't chance it now. If she saw any silk stuck on the wall, she'd leave it.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
So, Stoick. What would you clean with A) a stick of rhubarb, and . . .

Stoick  
[immediately] A dog's arse. Next.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
A dog's arse, right.

Stoick  
Quite right. [mimes inserting rhubarb into a dog's rear] Get it right in there.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
And B . . . [breaks off with sharp inhale]. One use per stick of rhubarb?

Stoick  
I wouldn't be putting it in the crumble if that's what you're asking!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, no! Brown sauce is the next one.

Stoick  
Brown sauce?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes.

Stoick  
I'm bracing myself for the sirens but coins.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah!

Hiccup  
Windows.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
They would . . . They would clean . . . Windows, no. I don't think so. No windows. No. No, really, I mean coins was a good answer. I mean . . . Copper.

Stoick  
Copper.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Copper and brass, yeah. But I don't want you to get all excited and think "My God, I've got two points for that", because actually, the rhubarb . . . sticking it up a dog's arse is not right.  
Some people say aluminium saucepans come up lovely with rhubarb and certainly silver. Silver does very well . . .

Stoick  
You clean silver with rhubarb?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Absolutely!

Viewscreens: A picture of silver jewelry next to a picture of a copper kettle..

Tooth  
How do you do that? With a sort of stick?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah, you just rub it in like that and then you buff it off.

Stoick  
Because if I walked into a room and saw a man rubbing rhubarb on my silver, I would beat him to within an inch of his life, and call the police! And then you walk in there and he's doing what you've recommended: [mimes rubbing silver] "Morning!" The dog's in the other corner looking a bit nervous.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well anyway, it seems to be true. These are good, ecologically sound things. We may have to return to the days when we used lemon and vinegar and brown sauce, and . . .

Stoick  
I'd never get me coppers out me pocket and think, "They look a bit dull!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I . . . You're the ones who suggested coins! I was saying a kettle for example-[gestures to viewscreen]-or any other . . .

Stoick  
[incredulous] No one has a kettle like that! Where do you plug in that . . . Look at it! We don't all live in a fluffy-duffy Dickensian world of charm like you! [as Fry] "Oh, there goes the kettle, and on the Aga!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's a perfectly sensible way of cooking food and preparing meals!

Stoick  
[squawks with laughter]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It keeps the kitchen warm!

Stoick  
No wonder the fucking Twinings had you, pal! It was . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
[laughs] I feel . . . I feel a mad . . .

Stoick  
[as Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi] " . . . of proper kettles, and proper porcelain tea! [cackles grandly] China! Oh, England! Cricket!"

Hiccup  
Can you do an advert where you're cleaning a kettle with some brown sauce? [mimes cheerfully cleaning a kettle]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I jolly well will now!

Hiccup  
Go on!

Stoick  
Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi Fry for HP! "Baaah!" [mimes gingerly wiping a kettle]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, you're ineffably silly, but totally on fire, and that's wonderful. You should have points somewhere along the line, but not for the rhubarb up the dog's arse.  
Hiccup, Hiccup, Hiccup, your chance to shine but not, in this case, kettles. What is the cheapest way to remove blood stains from clothes?

Viewscreens: Two pictures of a man in surgical mask and scrubs, holding tools and covered in blood.

Hiccup  
[eyes widen at the image]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Let's imagine you cut yourself shaving and you get a spot there.

Hiccup  
The cheapest way?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yeah.

Hiccup  
You have to go down to the river and beat it on a rock.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Quicker than that. You can keep the shirt on, almost.

Hiccup  
Hot water? Spit?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Ooh, you're right. Your own saliva. Yeah. Suck it out.

Hiccup  
[pretends to spit on his shirt and wipe]

Merida  
Can I just say I'm so impressed you've got a picture of my husband in our fantasy sex costumes?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
What do you wear in this scene?

Merida  
Oh, erm, I sort of, kind of, chop one of my limbs off, and kind of make myself white, and just lie there like this: [leans back and gurns]. And he comes in-

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Looms in.

Merida  
-gives me an injection, cleans me arse with a bit of rhubarb, and then we watch Neighbours. It's great!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
You see? There's no need to go out on the town beating people up and drinking Bacardi Breezers. You can have an innocent time . . .

Stoick  
[bursts out laughing

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
[in know-it-all tone] I know about hoodies and pikeys and chavs!  
Now ladies, put up your feet a moment because this one [in Robert Robinson voice] "is for father and younger son only!" So, erm . . . [normal voice] Stoick and Hiccup, tell us something interesting about door hinges.

Tooth  
[presses buzzer, which hairdries] Door hinges used to be made out of wood-

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes.

Tooth  
-erm, but they weren't very effective . . . and, so . . . [starting to laugh]-then they started making them out of metal, and it's . . . it's got a lot better since then.

Hiccup  
You can clean 'em with brown sauce.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That's true! That is true. Have you ever hung a door on its hinges? Have you ever fitted hinges to a door?

Merida  
Yeah, we have.

Tooth  
We have.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
You have?

Tooth  
We . . . Yeah.

Merida  
Yeah.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
All right, so how do you space the hinges out? Let's say the top hinge is-

Tooth  
Yeah.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
-six inches from the lintel . . .

Tooth  
Yes.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Where would the bottom hinge be? Six inches from the floor?

Tooth  
Er, no. It would be lower.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Lower?

Merida  
I like the fact that he's actually taking seriously that we really have hung doors.

Tooth  
I have hung a door! I have hung a door!

Merida  
Oh, she has really hung a door! I've hung a bloke.

Tooth  
I bet I hung it wrong.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
The point is this. [holds up his pen] Let's say this is the jamb. So this one is six inches from the top, but that's nine inches up, in order to create the effect of them being equally spaced. Because you're always looking down at the bottom one, and there's foreshortening. If you actually equally space them, it looks wrong; it looks as if the lower one is too low.

Tooth  
I . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
So you have to do it to that . . . But in America, it's five and ten. And in some Western states of America, it's seven and eleven like a clock . . .

Merida  
[exaggeratedly shocked] No!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes! It is!

Merida  
[to Tooth] My God!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Seven inches down, eleven up! I know, it's a shocker! You heard it here first, Merida.

Merida  
I'm frightened now!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I bet you are.

Merida  
Is there a doctor here?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I want to imagine you measuring your door hinges when you get home and saying, "Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi was right! Six, nine!"

Merida  
I'm going to send you a picture of me measuring my door hinges naked!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes, please! I want it. But the middle one . . . the middle one goes exactly in between the two, so there's the six, the nine and then the one in the middle. And there's the interesting thing about doors.

Hiccup  
Doors are seventy-eight inches long.

Merida  
All doors?

Hiccup  
Domestic doors, generally. You might have to take a bit off.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That's six foot six.

Merida  
How do you know that?

Hiccup  
Bought a door recently.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
You see? And who hung it?

Hiccup  
Because . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Who hung it on its hinges?

Hiccup  
My friend Keith, who's a carpenter.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well, he'll know about that.

Hiccup  
He's also a stand-up comedian, so it's a right laugh having him round.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, my God.

Hiccup  
Er . . . The door handle kept turning like that-[mimes continously turning door handle]-and turning and turning and turning, and I couldn't get into the loo. And I really needed to go, so I kicked the door in! And it was the only time I've ever kicked a door in.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's rather good!

Hiccup  
Brilliant!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Great feeling!

Hiccup  
It was a really cheap flimsy door.

Tooth  
Was Brenda in there?

Hiccup  
And it smashed like that, and it exploded, and the door bit fell down, there was wood everywhere, and I burst in . . . and had a crap!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Lovely! Very nice!  
When, er, when I left university, me and my friend Hugh Laurie shared a house, and we had a bit of work to do, and our plasterers... do you know who they were?

Tooth  
Oh . . .

Hiccup  
Cannon and Ball!

Tooth  
Charlie Higson.

Hiccup  
Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse were our plasterers, yes.

Hiccup  
[chortling] And you were their inspiration!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes.

Hiccup  
For so many characters!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yes, exactly.

Stoick  
[as Hugh Laurie] "Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi, the fellows in the hall are awfully funny!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
That's Hugh, is it? Right. I'm telling. Baah.

Stoick  
[as Laurie] "What do you say we, er, listen in on them and nick a few jokes?" [as Fry] "Baaah! Baaah!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I think the boot was on the other foot! I think the boot was very much on the other foot. They overheard us being amusing in the kitchen. Erm . . .  
Now, finally, we plunge into the cupboard under the stairs to entangle ourselves in the kite strings of General Ignorance, so fingers on buzzers, and first one: Name a drink made from beans.

Merida  
[presses buzzer, which vacuums]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Merida got in first.

Merida  
Oh, it's got to be coffee.

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "COFFEE".

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh! No.

Tooth  
[presses buzzer, which hairdries]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
No, coffee is made from seeds of the coffee plant. It has no beans. It has cherries and berries, and it has, er, seeds, but no . . . although we call them beans . . .

Tooth  
Coffee beans, but no beans?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It isn't a bean in the botanical sense. A bean. Like Mr. Bean or bean beans, beans, haricot beans, mung beans, runner beans, French beans . . .

Merida  
I know different types of beans!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, good. Phew. Kidney beans. It's not, in that sense, a bean. Bean bean bean bean bean. So that's it, you could've said that . . .

Hiccup  
Baked bean juice!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Yep, yes, or pea soup.

Hiccup  
You call it that?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
You could've said pea soup.

Hiccup  
I call it baked bean juice.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
What, the juice from a baked bean can?

Hiccup  
Yeah.

Stoick  
The tomato sauce?

Hiccup  
Yeah.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
It's sugar. It's sugar and water and tomato sauce . . .

Stoick  
So, Brainiac, what can we clean with that?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Aha!

Stoick  
There's researchers out the back now sticking flowers in it, pouring it over dogs . . .

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Do you know, I was at university, and there was a young man who was called Heinz. I knew it wasn't his real name because he was actually an Etonian, rather sort of blonde, effete guy. [public school accent] He was really nice. "Oh, hi, actually!" Really super guy, very funny. Everything was "hilarious". "God, that's really funny, actually. That was seriously funny." Er, really nice. [normal voice] And . . . And I asked a . . . a friend who had been at school with him . . . I said, you know, "His name's William or Piers or Hamish," or whatever, you know. I said, "Why does everyone call him Heinz?" They said, "It was when he was at school. Somebody burst into his room without knocking and he had a mound of baked beans all over his knob and he was wanking in it!" And . . . So this poor guy is called . . . And everyone's called him Heinz! He went "Hi, yeah, absolutely."

Stoick  
I used to put boiling hot cheese on top of my beans, I hope he didn't...

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, on top of your beans! Thank God for that!

Hiccup  
Is beans a euphemism in this case?

Stoick  
And when you go in and he's there, what do you say in that situation?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
"Sorry!"

Stoick  
"Black pepper sir?" [makes twisting motion]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Stop that!

Stoick  
What kind of culinary accident do you have to have . . . to discover the pleasure of the beans . . . on the old fella?

Hiccup  
He split it in his lap! He just sat down to watch the telly.

Stoick  
"Ahhh!"

Hiccup  
[arms outstretched in dismay] "Oh, no. [then reconsidering] Ooh . . . "

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
"Mind you . . . !"  
So, yes, pea soup, you could have said, of course, is something you drink that's made from beans. Er, coffee is really a fruit and made from seeds, not beans. Now, have you ever slid down a banister?

Hiccup  
Yes.

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "YES".

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Well . . .

Hiccup  
[shrugs and laughs in disbelief]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
I have to say . . .

Hiccup  
Yes, I have!

Stoick  
Please don't destroy Hiccup's childhood!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
There is, bless him!  
Yes, the point is this, that the little yellow thin up-and-downies are balusters, sometimes wrongly called "banisters" and the bit on the top is called a "balustrade", so you should be sliding down a balustrade, not a banister.

Merida  
When I was at college, I slid down a barrister.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Did you?

Stoick  
Did you hit yourself on the knob at the end?

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Very good indeed!

Hiccup  
"Ooh!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Anyway. And now, for two hundred points, what did Wordsworth smell?

Viewscreens: Two pictures of Wordsworth, with his hand on his forehead.

Hiccup  
Well, daffodils, obviously!

Forfeit

Viewscreens: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "DAFFODILS.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Oh, dear, that's minus . . . minus . . .

Hiccup  
Clouds. He smelt clouds!

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
He smelt clouds? No, he didn't, when he wandered lonely as one, he didn't, no. The answer, I'm afraid, is "nothing". He was anosmic. He had no sense of smell at all. He could not smell anything. It was Robert Southey and various others that reported on this, he had no sense of smell.

Tooth  
That why he's looking kind of worried? [imitates pose from viewscreens]

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
He is looking very worried there.

Stoick  
That's, er . . .

Hiccup  
He's going, [distressed] "Oh, what does it smell like?!"

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
He only makes two references to smells in all his poems. You can be congenitally anosmic or you can get it from a bang on the head or occasionally from a vitamin A deficiency.  
So, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, one and all to look at the scores. Do you know, for the first time on the show and she's the outright winner with minus three, it's Toothiana! Stoick comes in second for the men with minus four! And Merida; third place with minus eighteen! Ohh!

Merida  
[to Tooth] Minus-18. Bloody hell.

Vyso-vo-mrake-nochi  
Which means the man that'll be cleaning the studio and waxing the floor is none other than Hiccup Haddock on minus sixty-four!  
That's all from Merida, Tooth, Stoick, Hiccup, and from me, and I leave you with one last good housekeeping hint, courtesy of Viz magazine's Top Tips. "Press Rice Krispies into the treads of your car tyres for that expensive gravel drive look." Happy hoovering, good bye. Thank you very much.


End file.
